Mam, the Angel
by shakespeareansushi
Summary: At first I was just struck dumb by what he said because I couldn't make sense of it at all. "I said, was your mother an angel?" says Tom. Well that was just ridiculous, and I thought ol' Tom was playing jokes on me, trying to get me to say something foolish. I don't remember my mam too well, but I knowed she never had no wings, and I told him so.
1. Tom Pays a Visit

**PREFACE**

Well, I _warn't_ about to start a new book, all on my account, as writing's a hard, grueling work and I layed I'd give myself an early retirement. Books is plenty good, and why I wish'd I'd learned to read 'em sooner, but _laws_ if they ain't the blamedest things while you're trying to write one. So you see I warn't much in a hurry to start up another.

But there was a person who convinced me. She was visiting town and happened to see me fishing by the side of the river. Well she recognized me straight off, asked if I was Huck to which I said I was, and was right amiable with me. She said she loved _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ , and told me I had quite the way with words (though I reckon she was mistaken, as I never design to put words anywhere but just where they sorter naturally fall), and asked if I would write another book. Well I already did, I told her, two, in fact; those being _Tom Sawyer Abroad_ and _Tom Sawyer, Detective_. Well yes, says she, but those are mostly about Tom, as they've got his name in the titles; Tom and his dragging you around in foolish business. Won't you write another book about _you_? Well, gosh, I says, kinder bashful-like, I don't know, as I reckon Tom's a great deal more interesting than I am. But she wouldn't stand for that, and told me I was plenty interesting, and had other qualities besides that Tom didn't have—like personalness and general honesty. She loved Tom, too, of course, but it was me she wanted to hear about.

So, I took up writing again, and here comes this book as a result, about the year before that whole business with Injun Joe. And I tell you, writing's lousy, awful work, even if the finished product more'n makes up for it.

Huckleberry Finn

* * *

One of the best things about life, or ruther the way _I_ lived it, was that a body never had to get up before noon, and could sleep as late as he pleased. See, with no mother around, nor no pap neither (for I hadn't seen him about three months or so), just _who_ could tell a body what to do?

But sometimes it warn't the case. Lots of mornings I would find myself being shook awake early by Tom, because he would be heading off to school—or supposed to be heading there, anyway, but lots of times he'd stop to talk to me first. He knowed which hogsheads it was that I was particular towards, and which doorsteps, and though I switched it up often enough, he could find me most every time. 'Hain't you supposed to be in school,' I often says, and then Tom says right back, 'I don't know, hain't you?' Well that was a pretty good answer, because I could be in school if I wanted to, but I didn't want to, and there was no one to make me, so I wasn't. And it warn't no sense to bother no one else about something I was guilty of, too.

So Tom would talk to me in the mornings, and every now and then let on that he'd be going off to school in just a couple minutes more, but sometimes he didn't never go off to school, and just decided to play hooky instead. You could sort of see it in his eyes when he thought it over in his head, but he always just pretended that he'd lost track of time.

Tom was a good pretender, but lord was he an awful grand storyteller. It was all because of those books he read—Tom would complain up and down if he was made to read something, by Aunt Polly, or his schoolteacher, or his Sunday school teacher, or whoever—but any book that he found _himself_ , why he'd read it all up and know it by heart next morning. That way he could tell it to me, too, and I wouldn't be missing out on nothing. But he read too much about pirates and thieves and muskiturrs and such. So many pirates and thieves are just fine, but after you've heard about so many, them stories they start to sound all the same. But Tom he didn't mind, and I tried not to either, because Tom knowed how to tell the stories as to keep a body on the edge of his seat, no matter how many times he'd already heard them before.

One morning Tom comes after me, a shouting my name, and I roll over in my sugar hogshead and pretend to be asleep, because I was used to sleeping late into the day—you get that way when there ain't nobody to wake you up, as I've said before. Well Tom he wouldn't leave me alone, and he was mighty excited, and so I finally gave up pretending to sleep and looked at him.

"What is it, Tom?" I says, unfriendly-like. "Can't a body get some rest?"

Tom didn't back off one bit but he set down at the entrance of my barrel so I couldn't get away from him. "Why, you can rest all you want after I've gone to school, Huck," says he, real eager and without a care, "but I've got something to ask you."

"Well, go on an' ask," I told him, all ornery.

"Is it true that your mam was an angel?"

At first I was just struck dumb by what he said because I couldn't make sense of it at all. So I told him to ask it again.

"I said, was your mother an angel?" says Tom.

Well that was just ridiculous, and I thought ol' Tom was playing jokes on me, trying to get me to say something foolish. I don't remember my mam too well, but I knowed she never had no wings, and I told him so. Tom just stuck up his chin at me.

"Why Huck, an angel don't have to have wings, because sometimes they disguise themselves—didn't you know that?" asks Tom, like he knowed everything in the world. "An angel'll sometimes make herself out to be a human, so's to test how nice people are. It's true—Aunt Polly read me a verse on it last Sunday."

That made me nervous, because I had been plenty unfriendly and downright ornery to lots of people, and I never once reckoned any of them might be an angel waiting to test me. I wondered if all the angels in the sky were just waiting to pounce on me.

"But if they make themself out to be human, how's a body s'posed to know if they're really an angel?" I asked Tom, because I figured that would be mighty useful to know. That way I could see who was an angel and who wasn't, and make sure to treat all the angels wonderful good, and not give a hoot about all the others.

Tom started to say something, but then he shut his mouth, and pretended he had never meant to speak in the first place. Then he cast his eyes over my head, and I knowed he was thinking, because I looked behind me and there warn't nothing interesting back there. I reckoned that Tom didn't really know how to see if someone was an angel, but he was just too stubborn to say so.

After a minute or so Tom finally owned up to his not knowing, and so the two of us together racked our brains. Of course we knowed how to tell if somebody was a witch, _everyone_ knows that, and besides there are plenty of ways. We reckoned that since a witch was the opposite of an angel, witches being all bad and angels all good, all the signs of a witch must be opposite for an angel. For example if there are ever any stray cats in town, and a witch walks by, why a whole herd of cats will take up following her, but only the black ones. Here Tom and me fell into some disargument: Tom reckoned that an angel would be followed by cats just the same way, only she would be followed by the white ones, but I reckoned that there wouldn't be no cats following her at all, because the angel had made herself out to be a regular human and how would a dumb cat be able to tell she warn't just a regular person? We argued that one back and forth, Tom and me, until I called Tom a bad name, and he got mad, and said he'd ruther hurry along to school than keep talking with the likes of me, and then I begged him not to, because I didn't want to be lonesome—only I didn't tell him that part, just told him that this talk about angels was mighty interesting and I hated to have it cut short.

Well Tom he stayed, and I reckoned he was bluffing the whole time, because I knowed Tom didn't like school enough to go to it when he could be talking to me instead. He was probably just glad I had taught him the bad name anyway. But he pretended to be real reluctant about the whole thing, and finally sighed and said he'd stay if I was sorry, and besides, we'd never got around to deciding if my mam was really an angel or not.

I asked him where he'd got the idea of it in the first place, and he said he heard it from the church ladies last Sunday.

"They was talking about you, Huck," Tom told me. "How it starts out is this: one of them ladies says, 'That poor Finn boy, without a home and with no one to take him to school, nor church, nor nothing!'"

Tom did such a good church lady voice that we just about bust ourselves laughing before he could start up again. Finally I told him to keep going with his story, so he did.

"Well they went on talkin' about you for a while, first about how so poor and awful it is that you're alone, and then just about how downright terrible you are, Huck—why, one of the ladies reckoned that you'd c'rupted half of the schoolchildren in St. Petersburg."

"What's _c'rupted_ , Tom?" I asked.

"I don't know, but it sure sounds mighty, don't it?"

It _did_ sound mighty, and I told him so. Tom looked proud for having been the one to deliver me such a compliment.

"So I listened in, only because it's ever so marvelous how much of a reputation you've got, Huck! I wish I were _half_ so talked about. But anyway—after they were all through complaining about you, one of them ladies started talking about your pap—"

I wrinkled my nose all of a sudden, because I hadn't thought of him for so long, not until Tom had to go and bring him up. Why, I had quite nearly forgotten him up till now. I wouldn't have minded one bit if I never saw pap again, and now that Tom had went and mentioned him, I got to feeling antsy like we had just summoned him.

"—about how dreadful drunk he gets when he's in town, and how ain't nobody seen him in so long, and 'good riddance,' one of them said. Well then they got to talking about your mam, Huck. Says one of the ladies, 'Why, I remember when that Finn child was born, and it was just the same, with ol' Finn going 'round getting drunk and leaving his poor missus all alone to care for the child.'"

Tom's talk was making me feel kinder uncomfortable, because I didn't much like it that he was so easy talking about me. But of course it was all true, and I knowed it, so why did I feel so dreadful ashamed?

"One of the women reckoned that your mam was...oh, what did she say?—a harlot."

"What's a harlot, Tom?" I asked, uneasy. I didn't reckon it was a good thing, because I heard people talk about me all the time, and nobody never had nice things to say about me or my family.

"Don't know, but that don't matter, because right after that the other lady jumps in and says, 'Why, no, no, that ain't it at all! She was an angel, a regular angel, and she come right down from heaven, as far as I'm concerned. Never minded her own self, bless that soul, even with a little boy she never hardly cared for herself.' And then she went on telling how your mam always sewed up clothes for children, and gave things to folks who needed it, even when she had almost nothing, and even though your pap was always a-wasting money—"

"Never mind pap," I cut in, since I knowed enough about pap already. "Go on about my mother."

Tom he agreed, and concluded that my mam was an all-around wonderful person who always helped everybody, which I knowed sort of, but had maybe forgot, it had been so long. I reckon that the rest of St. Petersburg had forgotten it too, just because pap was so bad that he about erased anything good my family ever did. And me—well, a body can forget all about a body with time enough. Why it even took me a while just to get the picture of my mother in my head. Mostly I just remembered that she was angry at pap all the time, and he was angry at her, and that one time he hit her right in front of me and she cried but pap wouldn't let me come near her after she got hit. And I remembered I got caught in their fights sometimes, and sometimes mam would say 'Huckleberry agrees with me,' even when I hadn't a clue what they were fighting about. And pap would say 'Boy, if you go on agreeing with her you'll fetch yourself a mighty whipping,' and I'd run over to pap's side every time though I was scared of him so much.

I hadn't thought of pap and my mother in such a long time, because it's so easy to forget all those things that hurt you when you keep yourself busy and don't let yourself have no time to stop and think. Whatever thoughts had crept into my mind during all that time were poor ones, and bad ones, and ones that made me forget all about whatever good things my mam did when she was alive. I got to wondering what she'd think of me now, what with my smoking and swearing, but that made me feel right ashamed and like curling up and hiding and I warn't about to do that with Tom setting right there.

Tom had been talking and talking, but somewhere along I had stopped listening, and hadn't realized when he asked me a question. He had to ask it two or three times before I listened to him again.

"Didn't you never notice anything special about your ma, Huck? Don't you reckon that she could have been an angel?" Tom was asking for the fourth time. Well suddenly all this talk about my mam felt sour like when you eat something bad, and I didn't want to talk about her no more.

"She warn't no angel, Tom," I told him, cross. "If she had been, she would've flew away a long time ago, away from pap."

Tom reminded me real smartly that an angel in disguise didn't have no wings.

"Well then," I argued, "if she was an angel, she wouldn't have died."

"How do you know she didn't just disappear and go back to heaven where she come from?"

Well now I was starting again to reckon that Tom was making fun of me, and my mother too, and I couldn't stand for that. But after a second I knowed that Tom warn't making fun, he was just being thickheaded.

"Of course she's dead, Tom," I told him, impatient. "I was there when she got sick and I was there when she died and I was there when they buried her. She's dead, and she warn't never no angel, and by _God_ , Tom Sawyer, I wish you wouldn't talk to me so."

Tom was surprised by my getting cross with him, and I could see from his face he never meant me no harm, but I didn't feel like apologizing so instead I just crawled a little ways to the end of my barrel and set there all stubborn with my back to him. A minute later Tom made it up to me by giving me a thimble out of his right trousers pocket. It was his Aunt Polly's thimble but he'd snitched it, it was so pretty. It was the loveliest thimble I ever did see, and had tiny vines all around it, and so of course I was all right with Tom after that.

"At any rate, Huck, I reckon your mam's an angel now, even if she warn't before," Tom said nice-like.

I shrugged, and said I didn't know, because Tom had told me before that a body couldn't get to heaven without having never read the Bible, and my mam she never learned how to read. Besides, what was a body supposed to believe, when there warn't never anyone dead coming back and telling us what it was like? Since the last time I saw mam was when she got put in the ground, I always figured she was sort of like some kind of pretty earthworm, swimming through all the dirt real graceful and pushing up flowers and grasses and sweet berry bushes everywhere. Tom laughed when I told him that, and he said I didn't know nothing. That made my face go hot—especially because I didn't think she was a worm _anymore_ , it's just that it was what I thought when I was little and didn't know better. But he was right, I _didn't_ know nothing, and maybe mam _was_ an angel instead of a worm.

By and by Tom's Aunt Polly came into town for some shopping, but she saw Tom with me, and she yanked Tom away real quick and gave me a yelling (and Tom a hiding, he later told me, both for playing hooky and for talking to me). There ain't a single grownup in St. Petersburg who likes me, which is just as well because I don't like none of them either.

Well that night I got to thinking, which I usually didn't do because I just always went straight to sleep after smoking my pipe in the evening. I reckoned that my mother couldn't have been an angel when she was living, because if angels pretended to be human just to test how nice people were, why mam she would have struck pap down in a second because there warn't never one single bit of nice in him. And besides, who would ever believe it, that I was the son of an angel? Folks always called me a 'son of a devil,' which I reckon is closer to the truth.

But for a body who warn't an angel, she did all right, and suddenly I could begin to remember again that I had loved mam, and that she had loved me. I could remember when she would wrap a blanket around me at night and peck me on the head, and how she'd bathe me in the river and take me aside and cut my hair every now and then. My hair was always uncommon raggedy long, now, and I was always covered up in dirt 'cept for when I went swimming and some of it washed off. It was such a long time ago that mam died, it seemed to me—I'd growed so much since then I didn't hardly think mam would recognize me, if she saw me now. 'Why, you're so big, Huckleberry,' she'd say sometimes, and then other times she'd call me 'my little Huckleberry,' and then sometimes she'd call me 'Huckleberry pie,' which I hated so, especially because then she'd kiss me all wet and slobbery. And with so much remembering I came to realize that I missed mam, and I felt so dreadful alone all by myself.

It was so much easier to just lump my memories of mam in with my memories of pap, and think of both of them as ornery and mean, even if it was only pap who was, mostly. Maybe I didn't know nothing, like Tom always said, but I sure knowed that it was easier to hate a body than it was to love a body. I wondered if mam liked it, being an angel. I wondered if she followed me around all day, or if she was right here beside me in the sugar hogshead.

Well that didn't do me no good because it started me thinking about ghosts, and pretty soon I felt more lonesome than ever, and I wished I still had mam, though it made me feel babyish to wish so. And I cried a little, and worried that ghosts would come to spook me in the night, and so I crossed my heart three times to ward off the spirits. I promised myself that in the morning, I wouldn't think of mam or pap no more, and I would head off to do some fishing and maybe filch an apple or two and just be Huck again.

But maybe Tom Sawyer was right, and maybe my mother was an angel, because suddenly I felt right comfortable and just like my old self. And when a wind blew suddenly, why it blew one little feather right into my hogshead. I picked it up and looked at it, and sure enough, it was white. Everyone knows that when you find a white feather, it means someone dead is thinking of you.

I stuck that feather in my trousers pocket, and that night I slept all warm and cozy.


	2. Life Treats Me Grand

Well, I'll be darned if that little white feather didn't bring me the swellest of luck. Next morning I slept late, borrowed an apple off a cart where a man was selling them (only he never knowed about our arrangement, but that don't matter), and then headed out to do some fishing, just like I promised myself the night before. The apple I borrowed was the best I ever tasted, and made a mighty fine breakfast. Sometimes apples is all mealy and powdery on the inside, and taste something like sawdust, 'stead a sugar, though you never would a knowed it by looking at the outside, bad apples have a way of hiding themselves so. They get that way when they been setting around off the tree for a while too long, but I'll be blamed if I ever see an apple seller who wouldn't a sold them apples regardless. Folks is always trying to cheat you—that's what pap always said, anyway, and I reckon it's true.

But _this_ apple warn't like that—no sir, it surely warn't! Why it was just about the perfectest apple I ever did taste, all crunchy like leaves in the fall, and red like rosy cheeks in winter, and sweet like honey in the spring, and all big and bright like the summer sun. With an apple like that, a body didn't need another apple for a whole nother year. I ate it all up, all but for the seeds, which I spat on the ground to maybe grow some apple trees that would make some more apples just as good as this one, and I saved the stem, which I chewed between my teeth sort of like a seegar. I almost spit that out alongside the road too, but then I thought better of it, and allowed I oughter keep it to remember that apple by. So I stuck that apple stem in my trousers pocket, and when I did the little white feather brushed up against my fingers and tickled me some, like it was saying hello.

And that apple warn't the last of the feather's luck. Wouldn't you know it, but as I went walking along the street with my fishing pole, my foot come across something kind of cold and hard and in a shape like a circle. Well, I grasp the thing in my toes, and lift up my foot, and why but there's a quarter, a whole real quarter, right scrunched up between my two left toes! I marveled some, and said to myself right jolly, "That's what a body gets when he don't wear shoes," and dropped the quarter into my pocket alongside the apple stem and the little white feather, and went along, whistling now.

I passed the schoolhouse on my way to the river, and thought of how Tom, and Joe Harper, and Ben Rogers, and all the other boys was in there now, learning things. Me, I don't take no stock in ejucation. Pap always said that all a body needed to know was how to survive in the world, and didn't need to know nothing about folks who was already dead, because they was dead, and so they didn't matter no more nohow. As for arithmathmatics and the like, well, that ain't no use either. Why should a body learn to count to a thousand if he ain't never going to have a thousand things to count? Seems to me like folks learn you knowledge just so's you can forget it again.

Most all the time, Tom complained about school. He said you had to set in one place, and wear your shoes, and stay still and be quiet, and listen to the teacher go on and on about truck you didn't care about. He said that you'd get whipped for the most ridiculous things, like if you laughed at the wrong time or did something by accident. He said that why he reckoned he'd been whipped twice as many times as any slave, maybe more. It got so much that after a while of listening, I said with convickshun, I was mighty glad no one ever made me go.

Well, once I done and said that, Tom would look at me kind of angry-like, and kind of wishful, and turn around and say that school warn't so awful and it was the grandest thing and why he and Joe Harper they just about played all day behind the teacher's back and had a marvelous old time, and it was just the worst of luck that I couldn't be there too. Well, that confused me, and I told him so. Says I to Tom, "Say, Tom, but I thought you said that school was regular dismal?" And Tom just shook his head so that his curls tossed, and said "Naww," and said like he had a secret, "Why, if only you knew, Huck Finn. School is right jolly, and ever so fun. But of course _you_ wouldn't know it, seeing as you'd never been there!" Well then I asked him why he'd let on that school was so awful, if it was actually so grand, and Tom confessed that he always told me school was poor and unbearable because he never wanted me to feel bad that I couldn't go. That touched my heart, as one of them Sunday school ladies may say, and surprised me, and I swore I never knowed Tom to be so kind.

It warn't long before I found out Tom was playing me. How I found out was this: I had woke early and caught Tom walking to school, so I followed alongside, and he started talking school up and saying how glad he was to be going, and how eager, and boy, what fun he would have today! He said the teacher Mr. Dobbins was going to tell them all a thrilling story about a man called George Washington, who was a genuine war hero, and had become president of the United States besides, all because he chopped down a cherry tree and didn't lie when his pa asked him who done it. Well if that was all it took to be president, I reckoned pap was right about the govment—but I didn't say so, for I didn't want to spoil Tom's talk. Then Tom went on about his spelling class, and how he was best in it, and how he got to wear a medal round his neck as he told everyone what letters make up a word. He said he was even excited for arithmetic, because sometimes the teacher used little pieces of candy for them to count on, and then they got to eat them afterward.

Well, all that talk just plumb cleared out everything Tom had told me before, about school being so dreadful and intollerble, and soon I didn't remember nothing he'd said in _that_ line no more. "Say, Tom," says I, "maybe I oughter follow you along, and see what it's like for myself."

Tom his face just lit up when I said that, and he said it would be grand. We ran all the way to the schoolhouse, just as the school bell was ringing, and Tom led me inside and told me to set down next to him at his bench, because that was where Joe Harper set normally but Joe he was sick at home and not coming to school today. So I set, but I couldn't get myself to feel comfortable, that darned bench was so hard and stiff. Not to mention that the others begun to notice me, and look at me, and whisper to themselves. You don't need to learn from school how to know when something ain't right, for I had that feeling in my gut—you know which one I'm talking about.

I looked over at Tom, but he warn't doing nothing but just setting there, happy as a lark and looking real proud. By and by, the teacher Mr. Dobbins he comes up to the front of the room, and begins to say names, and after every time he said a name, the boy or girl whose name he said answered back to him, "Here, sir." He got through all the names without looking up once, but of course he didn't say mine, because I warn't supposed to be there. I thought that maybe I should just stay where I was and keep mum so as not to be noticed, but Tom he seemed to have other ideas.

"Mr. Dobbins!" shouts Tom all of a sudden, setting up tall in his seat and raising his hand high in the air. "Mr. Dobbins, sir—you forgot someone!"

Mr. Dobbins, he turns around real slow-like and looks stern at Tom, though he didn't seem to notice me yet, and _I_ dasn't let him.

"I believe I already called your name, Thomas," he says, but Tom he just shakes his head.

"It ain't me I mean, sir," said Tom.

"Then who _do_ you mean?" asked Mr. Dobbins, all impatient and bothered. Seemed like Tom pestering him was a usual sort of thing.

"Why," says Tom, pausing in a way he calls "for effect" before saying, "I mean Huckleberry Finn, of course!"

Well you never see a room full of eyes turn toward a body so fast. In an instant, everyone was looking at me, and I most wished I could sink into the floor. As for Mr. Dobbins—well, that poor man his eyes was bugging out of his head. Seems he thought it'd be a wintry day in Hades before he'd ever see _me_ in this place. He started to speak but couldn't, and it was a while before he finally found his words.

"What are _you_ here for?" asked Mr. Dobbins, the corner of his mouth twitching like he wanted to scowl, but couldn't, for surprise. As for me, I couldn't figure out a reply, because I didn't rightly know why I was there myself, and so I couldn't do much more than open my mouth and close it several times like a dumb old catfish hooked out a the water.

"Huck come here to learn, of course," said Tom, a smile on his face and his hands a folded up on the desk.

Mr. Dobbins turned to Tom, and then to me. I could see something sort of helpless in his eyes, underneath his frown, and his mouth twitched some more.

"I-it's true, sir," I said meekly, because I sensed that Tom was going to get in trouble for bringing me here, and if so then it warn't going to be on _my_ account, no sir. "I...I come here to learn."

Mr. Dobbins he looked some more at me, then at Tom, then at me again. By this time all the whispering and buzzing had died down some, leaving an awful, heavy silence in its place. Mr. Dobbins looked at me kind of thoughtful.

"You came here to _learn_?" he asked, soft and slow.

I gave Tom a quick glance before turning back to Mr. Dobbins and nodding, "Yes sir."

Mr. Dobbins nodded back at me, untrustful, but he seemed to take me at my word some. "Do you know your alphabet, Huckleberry?" he asked.

I never feel so much like a cornered animal than I did just then. I knowed some of it, but not all. I knowed 'N,' though I didn't know what 'N' was called—but I knowed it, because I had found an old broken compass on the shore of the river once, and it had a nice sharp 'N' on it where the needle was stuck. I knowed the compass had other letters on it, too. But try as I might, I just couldn't recollect none of the others.

"Well, of course I knows my alphabet," says I, and I'll be blamed if it warn't one of the most falsest lies I ever told. Mr. Dobbins walked down the aisle to where Tom and me was setting.

"Then would you please demonstrate for us, Huckleberry?" asked he, taking Tom's writing board and Tom's chalk and passing them over to me. I looked down at them, troubled, then back up again. Mr. Dobbins just frowned down at me and boy but it made me sweat something awful. I took up the chalk, and real shaky, I wrote down the one letter I could think of, the letter from my broken compass. My lines weren't straight, they were jagged, like ugly twigs on uncut bushes. Once I had finished it, I stopped, and tried to think.

I thought and thought, real hard, till I thought my head might bust. I just _knowed_ there were other letters on the compass. I knowed the 'N' was where north was, so naturally the other letters had to do something with east, west, and south. But I didn't know what letters was in east, west, or south, so I reckoned now I was pretty washed up.

But just then I thought of something brilliant. The round shape of the compass was in my head, and it made me realize there was another letter, what was just shaped like a circle and that was it! My discovery made me feel so grand, I grinned with pride as I drew that second letter and made it round as a melon, and I looked to Tom with joy.

When Tom saw what I wrote, his eyes went wide and then he looked kind of like he'd just been shot, his mouth was dropped so low, and he all of a sudden took to coughing, a real hacking kind of cough that wouldn't go away for a minute or two. When I looked to Mr. Dobbins, he'd turned white, and his mouth went a twitching again, and my but he looked about ready to skin me alive!

"Huckleberry Finn," he said, slow and shaky, "please come up to the front."

My mouth went all dry, like I'd just eaten a stale loaf of bread, but I couldn't do nothing but stand up and follow him to the front of the schoolhouse. I thought of running, but it was too late, because by the time I'd thought of it, he had his hand on me and was dragging me along.

All the boys was crowding over the writing board now, to see what I had wrote. They wanted to know what it was that made Mr. Dobbins fume so. _I_ wanted to know what it was that made Mr. Dobbins fume so!

When we got to the front I had to bend over with my hands on Mr. Dobbins's desk, and when I did I knowed what was coming next, because I was familiar with the way of things. Pap had made me lean over like that loads of times. Soon I heard a sound like brandishing a whip, and next thing I knowed, it was _whap! whap! whap!_ _whap!_ and I stung like I'd set on a thousand nettles. I cried a little, only because I hadn't had the time to prepare myself for it, and because it warn't no good to have all the others watching, and after it was all over I didn't give Mr. Dobbins a chance to whup me again. I was out the door so quick that a jackrabbit with a fire under his heels couldn't a caught me.

Later on I asked Tom what it was I had wrote that had made him cough so, and that had made Mr. Dobbins so mad. Tom he laughed and looked at me in admiration.

"Why, Huck! Mr. Dobbins asked you would you please demonstrate the alphabet, and you took that slate, and on that slate you wrote N-O— _no_!"

Well, you can't never find me in school again, after that. All I learned that day was how to take a whipping, and even pap taught me that much.

As I passed by the schoolhouse on my way to the river, I couldn't help but feel a little sorry that Tom, and Joe, and Ben was all there together and not me. But all it took was for me to remember what had happened on the one day I _did_ went to school, and then _I_ warn't sorry no more.

When I got to the river I set myself down on the shore and got out my fishing pole and cast out a line. I was so good at fishing I could most do it while asleep. I have quick fingers, and soon as I feel a tug I tug right back and the fish and me have a little contest of who's the stronger. Sometimes I'm stronger, sometimes the fish is. It don't matter much to me who wins, long as whoever wins does it fair and square. And fish don't never cheat. I reckon fishes is better than people, in that way.

The little white feather was still working its luck, because the fish they snatched at that hook soon as I'd got it in the water, and it went that way every time I took off a fish and cast a line again. Soon as I'd set a fish aside and baited the hook again with a beetle or worm or something, and got that hook in the river, why another fish would take that hook right up, without hardly any time in between. I reckoned there was a whole line of fish down there under the water's surface, just waiting their turns patientlike, and grabbing onto my hook soon as I'd got it down. I must've caught near twenty fish in that way, and no scrawny ones either.

After the third one, I started throwing the fish back, because if I kept more than three they'd likely spoil before I could eat them, and besides, if I was a fish, I'd prob'bly want me to throw me back too. But it was ever so marvelous—you never see so many fish just jump onto the line like that. And it was all because of that little white feather.

Everyone knows that a white feather means someone dead is thinking of you— _that's_ a fact. But something struck me just now, since I was thinking over what Tom had told me the day before, and I wondered if white feathers like this one might be from angel's wings. It seemed like enough. But then again, I ain't never seen an angel, so I warn't entirely sure. I didn't reckon such a short little fluffy feather like this one could have come off'n one of the holy host. Seemed to me a feather like this must've come off a chicken.

But mam must have sent me the chicken feather her own self. She always liked chickens. Besides, chickens is natural mothers. One time pap and me tried to lift a chicken from where it was brooding (this was when me and pap left St. Petersburg for some years, after my mother died), and when he'd got his grubby hands round the chicken's neck and raised her up and saw the eggs lying there, he told me to grab them. So I started to, and the eggs was warm, but just then that chicken up and pecked pap, and he was so surprised, and I was so surprised, I dropped the eggs back into the nest. It warn't so long a drop and the eggs didn't break, they just thumped back into the straw real soft. Well pap dropped the chicken after she pecked him a couple more times, and he went to cussing her, but she didn't pay him no mind, just scurried back over to her nest and covered up them eggs in her feathers. That was all _she_ cared about, and pap could a hollered till they heard him in California, but _she_ warn't at all bothered. You never see a cooler bird than a mother hen. Why she won't even give you the time of day if she's got matters more pressing. And ain't nothing more pressing to a hen than her eggs. I don't know why it is that people think chickens is cowards, because they ain't. Leastways, not the female chickens.

Maybe mam warn't an earthworm, nor an angel, now. Maybe she was a chicken.


	3. Conscience Gives a Whupping

There ain't nothing better, sometimes, than a nap on the bank of a river, which is just what I took after I hung my three fish on a branch with some string I'd had on me. See, this was the kind of life a body could be comfortable in—none of your going to school and dressing up nice and saying prayers. The only problem was that it could get a little lonesome, at times, what with no one to talk to or nothing.

But it warn't _so_ lonesome, since I had the river beside me, and the grasses, and the trees above me that was swaying their leaves in the breeze some, and making a sort of rustly noise. The swishy noise of the river and the sound of the trees in the wind made kind of a soft, whispering lullaby, and I couldn't have wished for no better company.

My ma she used to sing me lullabies. I can't recall the words; all I remember is that she done it. I disremember the tune, too. All I can recollect are little snatches of sound, like the glass shards of a voice, but not all of it in whole—kind of like if you can hear someone talking a little ways away, and their voice sort a flits in and out of your hearing. It was a bit like that with remembering her face, too. If I shut my eyes tight and tried to grab ahold of the picture of her, I might get it for a little while, but then she'd go blurry in my head and I wouldn't see nothing but shapes, and colors. I reckon what that comes from is that I was so little when she died, only maybe six or so, and it'd been near another six years since then. Tom Sawyer, his ma died when he was real young—I think he warn't more than three, he told me once, so of course he wouldn't remember his mam at all, very much. I think that once I asked him if he missed her ever, and he kind of laughed at me, and asked how could he miss a body he didn't hardly remember and hadn't hardly known. But then he got real thoughtful, and didn't say no more for the rest of the time.

Ben Rogers, he had a pa, but no mother. I never asked him what happened to her (and I wouldn't a asked Tom neither, if Tom hadn't brung it up first), but he didn't seem to be bothered none. Joe Harper, though, he had both his ma and his pa, and he loved them so. I didn't know them much, though I knowed that they didn't allow Joe to play with me, which was pretty standard on their part. But I had kind of a rosy view of Joe's mother, and the reasons is this: one time when I was taking a walk, Mrs. Harper she put out a pie to cool on her windowsill, and I happened to see her do it, so of course soon as she went away I snuck over and reached up to take it. Well when I did that there came a whack on my fingers all of a sudden, and I pulled my hands away, and there was Mrs. Harper with a rolling pin in her fist.

"You naughty thing!" she scolded, and I started to dash away, only then she changed her mind and started to call me back. I was already running, and I wouldn't have come, only instead of calling me "tramp" or "urchin"she called me "Huckleberry Finn, you poor child," so I come, just a little uneasy. When I slunk back, Mrs. Harper she told me I could have that pie, only I couldn't have the dish it was in, being that the dish was special and had been in the Harper family for a considerable old time. She told me to set down by the window and wait for her to put the pie into a tin pan, so I done it, though I worried some that it might be a trick she was playing on me.

But it warn't no trick, and after a little while, Mrs. Harper came back to the window and handed me that pie in a tin. Says she, "Careful now, it's hot. Bunch up your shirt and hold the pie in it like your shirt was a towel. That's the way. Walk slow and don't run, or you're sure to drop it, and that wouldn't do no good. Now you take that pie and fat yourself up some, and don't you go around stealing no other truck now, you hear? Good. Now you be on your way, Huckleberry Finn, and don't you let me catch you near my pies no more!"

Since she'd been so nice and all, I carried out the promise. Next time I snuck a pie from ol' Mrs. Harper, I didn't let her catch me, just like she'd asked.

But anyway, as far as I'm concerned, Mrs. Harper is all right. Tain't every lady who'll just give you a pie out of her own heart's goodness. Mothers are the closest creturs to angels you ever did see—leastways, when they're _your_ mother, that is. Mostly the only thing the mothers of St. Petersburg ever did for me was pull their children away and turn up their noses.

When I woke up from my nap it was a lazy sort of waking up, because the trees was still a swaying over me and the breeze just running over my skin, like they'd been a waiting for me the whole time. I got up after a bit and walked along the riverbank, and then when I tired of that I went a walking back into town again, and allowed I'd come back for my fish later when I was hungry.

It was then that I had another grand stroke of luck. Some feller had hung his coat on an old fencepost between where I was coming from and where the town was. So I lifted it. After all, that fence warn't ever going to need it. It was a blue coat, all wool, and a nice coat, too, but not so nice that it was all stiff and uncomfortable—it was worn in some. It fit me good (but not so good that it was all tight and sweaty), so I knew it warn't a man's coat. I reckoned some other boy had come along to do some fishing, just like me, and had got to be ruther warm while walking along, and so he'd left his coat to pick up later, only he never done it. Or, maybe he went fishing straight off, and fell in the river, and hung his coat on the old fencepost to dry, and forgot about it later. But I warn't particular about the details of it. A coat's a coat, and I was grateful to whichever feller lost it, regardless of how he'd gone about it.

I warn't wearing a coat already, as it was March and not exactly coat-wearing weather, but I put the coat on anyways because it was the most conveenyunt way to bring it along with me. But then I got to thinking, and a thing called conscience began a-chewing at my ear, as you may say. I wondered if the coat would have a name sewed into the collar. Tom's coats always have his name sewed up in the collar, since his Aunt Polly thinks he's like to lose them. Boys is always losing things, and mothers know it, and so mothers they got to do what they got to.

Well, I knew this coat warn't mine, but I didn't want to look and see if there was a name, because that would mean the coat _good and truly_ warn't mine. Maybe pap would say different, but I reckon that if a lost thing's got a name on it, or if you know who lost it, then it ain't lost and so it ain't yours to keep. I knowed for me anyways that I'd feel mighty awful if I was to keep something that I knowed warn't mine and warn't took fair and square. The way I see it, if you was to take a stick of candy from a store, it would be took fair and square, because it belonged to the store and not a person. Or, if you was to take an apple off a cart, it would be took fair and square, because the man selling them still had plenty left and wouldn't miss whatever you borrowed. But if you took a coat off an old fencepost, and the coat had a name on it—well, that kind of borrowing wouldn't be no good.

All the same, I didn't want to check the collar. Even if there was a name there, I wouldn't be able to read it, anyways, being so dreadful ignorant and all. _I_ had found the coat, and the little white feather had brung it to me, and so it was mine. I walked some more steps down the road, but they were uncomfortable steps, and long ones, too. I kept a-looking back over my shoulder to see if I could remember which fencepost it was I lifted the coat from. And all the while I started to feel like the collar was burning right into the back of the neck.

Conscience is an awful thing, and keeps you from doing most everything you want to. And I swear but the feather in my pocket made it worse, all the time, like I was being poked over and over—angels is dreadful ornery about conscience, you know, and when a body don't follow his, well, the angels _they'll_ show him what's what. The collar was a-burning and the feather was a-poking, and my heart went to pounding faster and faster and I kept thinking I oughter run because I felt someone behind me, though nobody was. It all comes of carrying angel feathers with you—I was sure now that it warn't no chicken's—because then you've got an extra oblergation to be good. Well it got to where a body would just go mad if he had to take much more of it. So finally I says, "Dad fetch it then, I guess I'll do right!" and tore that coat off, and I looked and there warn't no name on the collar, but I went back and hung it on the fencepost regardless. And I never feel so relieved afterwards, though I was a little sorry to see such a nice coat go—but that don't matter to me; I suppose it was too nice for my kind of taste anyway.

Just then I remembered what Tom had said, about how angels test you to see if you're good, and I felt kind of proud inside, because I knowed I had done the right thing. Or at least I reckoned so. What I don't understand is why it don't ever pay to do the right thing. I guess I felt nice that I done it, but now here I was, walking off with no more than what I come with. If I'd a gone ahead and done the wrong thing, why then I would a got a new coat out of it.

But still, it warn't _my_ coat. And I knowed it, because I went back to that fencepost later that night and I never see that blue coat again—leastways, not on the fencepost, that is.

I reckoned mam would a been proud of me. Mam she never thought too highly of borrowing; her way was the straight and honest one. I suppose I can respect that, but, well, sometimes the straight and honest way don't work—it's too steep a climb, as you may say, and maybe the only way you've got is the crooked and wicked one. Sometimes a body's got to stray from the path some just to keep alive. Pap always said, honesty don't fill a man's stomach. Only now, I seem to recollect something that my mam always said, which was to follow your heart, or something like that. Except what I know from myself is that my stomach most always aches when it's hungry, but my heart ain't never ached when I jest took a thing here or there. I wonder if it's supposed to. Maybe I'm just so wicked my heart has just grown cold and frozed itself.

Then again, I couldn't be all _that_ wicked, or else my good deed wouldn't a made me feel so pleased. It made me feel proud fit to bust, and when I got back into town, it felt grand to breathe and look about and walk wide steps like I owned the place. I reckon a king couldn't a felt more marvelous than I did just then. Seemed to me that all a feller ever had to do was skip down a street and whistle, and why that would make him king of the world. I never feel so happy and free and just so general songlark-ish in all my life.

But I did get quite the scare when I passed by the tanyard and noticed the form of a man sleeping there amongst the hogs. Only reason I was frighted so was because pap slept there, sometimes, and for the short half of a second I thought the man I saw was pap and I jumped up on my toes and got ready to hightail it out of there. But in a second more I see it warn't pap; this feller was too short and all-around just not scruffy-looking enough to be pap. And he was much too tan for pap's color, so I knowed it warn't him. Well, it was all fair and dandy that I knowed who this feller _warn't_ , but of course now I was curious and wanted to find out who it _was._ I clumb over the little fence that penned in the hogs, and crept around, feeling my steps in the shallow mud so as not to make a sound. And when I got to a position where I could see the feller's face clearly, why I see he warn't nobody but ol' Muff Potter! I should've expected so much, but I reckon I warn't really thinking about who it could be, so long as it warn't pap.

Muff Potter was a drunk, like my pap, though I heard from pap his own self that ol' Muff was no match for _him_ , and I believed it—there never was a man could match my pap in drinking. But Muff he come close behind, and was a general no-good do-nothing, folks always said. But I didn't mind, on account of I was a general no-good do-nothing too, just in miniature, and I planned to grow up that way, anyhow. Besides, Muff warn't lazy like people always thought he was. Most times I see him he was looking for work. Only problem was, what with his drinking and all, he couldn't never keep a job any more than he could keep his hands off a bottle, and by and by folks come to realize that and stop offering him work. It was a hard lot for Muff, all right, and he was still such a rather upright fellow, besides his drinking, that he dasn't borrow here and there to make his way like me and pap done, not even a little. And Muff warn't never ornery like my pap was, but was always kind and good to whatever children dared come near him, and told us where the best fishing spots was at and when was the best time at night to catch lightning bugs and other delightful things of that sort. And all free of charge, too.

Generly speaking, most boys and girls was kinder scared to go near him, but Tom and me warn't, and whenever we see him around we would bring him a present like a loaf of bread from Tom's cupboard or a poor dead mouse I'd found near my hogshead. When we gave him the bread, Muff thanked us, and insisted on sharing it with us, which Tom hated, because he thought it spoiled the point of giving away the bread in the first place. I could see Tom's way of thinking, but I reckon he might've been being a little ungrateful. Tom's a real feller, but he ain't never been hungry like I have, and I was thankful to Muff that he'd share his present like that.

Muff he didn't like my dead mouse so much, which I was rather disappointed about at first. It was a small, soft, tawny little thing with its tiny mouth open and little eyes closed. When I brung it to Muff, he held it in his rough old hands and cried over it, and said it was a poor victim of a cruel world, and I reckon he was a bit drunk just then, but _laws_ , the way he went on about it, I was most ready to cry too. He said there warn't much difference between a man and a mouse, and that a man warn't much smarter than a mouse, and that it was just like man to let a hundred mouses die every day and never once give a thought about it. After all of that, I didn't think my dead mouse was so grand, just only sad, and awful, and me and Muff buried him together in a little patch in the graveyard, and we would a said a prayer over him but neither of us really knowed how to go about it, seeing as we warn't really the prayer-saying kind. Ever since then I always been sorry to see a dead mouse, and I ain't never killed one. Rats they don't count.

I had been alone all morning and was ready for some company, so I shook Muff awake and said hello to him. He warn't quite fully up, as you may say, so I knowed he'd been a-drinking the night before, but though he seemed a little sick he was still quite pleasant. That was always the way with Muff; he hardly never had a harsh word to say.

"Hello, Muff!" I said, sounding kinder like a songbird. Muff he set up and rubbed his face over.

"Hello, Huckleberry," said he, and I told him he oughter call me Huck, since we was familiar and all. Muff he agreed, and I dragged over an old crate so I could set there and talk to him. I asked him how he'd been, and he said it was all about the same—he couldn't find himself any work nowheres, and maybe he oughter tramp on over to the next town and try there. I said it sounded like a good plan, only me and Tom would miss him so and if he did leave he must promise to never forget us. Muff he laughed and said he was agreed, if only me and Tom promised to never forget him, which I said we did. So then Muff asked me how I'd been, and I said about the same; pap still hadn't shown up anywhere and no one had yet forced me to go to school. Muff spoke up then, sounding a little droopy:

"Well, I don't know, Huck, maybe you oughter go to school, and clean up and be respectable. Maybe it'd be the best way."

Well I never hear such talk! "Muff, are you drunk still?" I asked, alarmed and feeling sort of betrayed, for here was Muff Potter, the worst do-nothing in St. Petersburg besides pap, telling me I oughter be sivilized.

"No, far as I know," said Muff, rubbing at his nose with his sleeve. His old coat was most worn through—I knew how that was. "I was just thinking Huck, how I don't never want you to end up like ol' Muff Potter, never amountin' to nothing nor making no one of hisself." And then he snuffled, and I was afeard he might start blubbering, he seemed so out of his own skin.

"Don't you talk that way, Muff," I scolded, for it always made me feel pretty low to hear him go on so. "You'll see better days, I reckon. They're all just hiding behind the clouds right now." And then Muff looked dismal, so I wanted to find some way to cheer him up. Well just then I remembered the feather in my trousers pocket, and then even better I remembered the quarter I had found in the street earlier. I fished it out and held it up so Muff could see it.

"Say, Muff," I said all of sudden, with the cheer back in my voice, "you must be hungry. Why don't you and me go and buy us some vittles?"


	4. Muff and Me in the Graveyard

With my quarter, we was able to buy ourselves two thick slabs of corn-pone, which we ate a slab apiece on a grassy area by the side of the main road leading away from town. It was already afternoon, but that was Muff's breakfast, since he hadn't eaten yet. I did him good to eat something; I see it kind of woke him up, and cheered him too. Before long he was all through feeling sorry for hisself, or at least as far as I knowed, and he didn't put no more thought to me going to school and getting sivilized, which was a mighty relief to me. Any more a that truck, and I would've feared that poor Muff had gone plumb crazy. See, a man don't talk sense when he ain't got no food in him.

The corn-pone was good, and filled me some, but that was nothing. What really set me a glowing was the memory of Muff's face, right when I took out that quarter and held it up so he could see. Why, you never see a body look so surprised, and thrilled, and just downright dumb for amazement! Of course, then, Muff turns about half a shade whiter, and asks if I'd gone and stole it out a some feller's pocket. I set him straight, quick as I could, for I knowed he didn't approve of such things—not right now, anyways; it seemed to me that whenever the whisky left Muff his conscience would come back a kickin' and a fightin' and just about knocking him over the head with convickshun. Funny how that is—when a feller does something bad, why you can bet his conscience just flies all over him afterward. I certainly knowed that myself.

I didn't tell ol' Muff how I got the quarter, just made sure he knowed it was all done in an upright kind of manner. I was saving my story till I could tell him the whole thing straight through, but it was awful fun to tease him a little bit, the way Tom does when he's got a story you know he's dying to tell. I'd smile a bit, and let Muff ask what made me smile so, then I'd cast my eyes up toward the heavens like I seen Tom do so many times, and say, "Nothing," only in a way to let you know that it warn't truly nothing at all. Oh, but it _was_ such a grand old time, and I could see why Tom liked to do it so much!

But I ain't no Tom Sawyer, and I couldn't hold out for long. By and by I start to see that Muff was losing interest, and laws, I couldn't stand for that. The whole tale come out of me at once. I told Muff all about the little white feather, and how it meant that a dead person must be thinking of me, and Muff agreed it was so. And then when I got to the parts about the apple, and the quarter, and then them fishes and the coat, Muff looked thrilled fit to bust, and I was dreadful proud. Well then he asked me who I thought must a sent me that feather, for it to bring such luck, and I start to feel a little hot and reddish, because I never told him that bit. I couldn't help but think of Tom, and how he'd laughed at me for thinking my mam had turned into an earthworm, and how there was a general sort of awkwardness swimming about the subject. I didn't feel no worry talking about pap, since—well—he was pap, and everyone knowed him and hated him and that didn't bother me none. But with mam, see, it was different. I warn't sure if it were good for me to talk of her. Kinder like how you ain't supposed to take the Lord's name in vain.

Of course, I'd taken the Lord's name in vain loads of times, so I reckoned it was all right to talk about my mam a bit.

"I reckon it was my mam sent it to me," I said, trying to smooth out the little hairs of the feather. "Must be her. I don't reckon I know any other dead folks who'd care for me so, on account of I'm ruther low-down and ornery. Seems mighty generous of an angel to watch out for me, even when it seems I'm made out for wickedness, don't it?"

I was waiting for Muff to answer, but he didn't, and I thought I felt a change in the air. I stuck the feather back in my pocket and looked up, and I saw Muff had a kind a mist in his eye. Well that warn't no good; I didn't know what in the world could a set him off so, but I warn't about to have him start blubbering. I was trying to think of some other thing we could talk about when Muff spoke up.

"Do you miss her, Huck?" he asked, and that only. He had a kind of shiver in his voice, and he spoke sort of soft-like. His eyes were all dewy like leaves in the morning, and I was a mite uncomfortable, only because I hoped he warn't upset on _my_ account.

Well I warn't sure how to answer him, if I missed my mam or not. I was so used to living on my own, and most of the time I never wanted for a mother. I liked to be dirty and stay up late and smoke my pipe and never say prayers. Still, it did give me quite a stone in the stomach sometimes when I saw how much them other boys loved _their_ mothers. Why, one time, Joe Harper he scraped up his knee real bad when he and Tom was playing knights of Camel-lot (only the knights rode horses 'stead of camels), and they might've heard poor Joe in Philadelphia he wouldn't stop wailing till his mother come and covered him with kisses. Tom gave Joe a hard time about it, but the whole thing was a little heavy in my opinion. I could see Joe warn't hurt awful bad, but I knowed it give him quite a turn, and I know from my own self leastways that sometimes just being scared is worse than the thing itself. Besides, I reckon Tom was just bitter, because of how Mrs. Harper scolded him so and told his Aunt Polly.

I didn't know if I was better off without my mam or not. Of course with pap it was hardly even a question, but with mam… I really couldn't say.

"Well, I reckon I might have liked to know her a little better," I said at last, figuring it was a safe enough answer. Only then I start to think that maybe I sounded a little too sorry, and that warn't the thing for Muff to hear. "But I get along fine. I s'pose it's just as well, anyway. Pap always said this world warn't but a step above hell, so leastways she's in heaven now."

I stopped, then, because a fearful thought crept into my head, one that I'd thought of before. I gave Muff a quick little look. "You _do_ reckon a body can go to heaven, even if they ain't never learned to read the Bible. Don't you, Muff?"

Muff seemed to think it over. "Well, I always heard it said that the Lord was near to everybody, even the poor folks. I reckon it's so."

Well that sounded good to me. I wouldn't want to have nothing to do with a feller who barred folks from them pearly gates just because they couldn't read, even if he _was_ the Lord Almighty. I was about to say so to Muff, but just then I notice a big, fat tear rolling down his cheek. It just about shocked me out of my seat.

"Why, Muff!" I says. "What's the matter?"

Muff he shuddered and sighed and let another tear fall; it really was a sight to see him so. "Oh, how I wish _they'd_ send _me_ a feather!" he said, all quiet, not even talking to me, really. Well now I see what must a set him off; there must be someone dead he cared about.

"Who, Muff?"

"My missus," Muff snuffled, shaking his head about. "My poor dead missus, and my baby girl."

Well that come as a surprise to me, since I never knowed he had either. They must've been gone for an awful long time. Muff warn't a young man, he was about forty or so if I remember right, so it warn't unreasonable that he should have had a family at some time, maybe even before I was born. And then I start to put the pieces together, and I see that _they_ must be the reason Muff was so dreadful drunk all the time. If I never learnt nothing else about drunks, it was that they always had a reason for it, regardless of whether it was a good reason or not. Why even my pap had a reason, and his reason was that he'd addled himself so much with liquor that when he was drunk he thought he was sober and when he was sober he thought he was drunk. But even beyond that, I remembered something else, which was that pap was never more drunk than he was right after my mother died. I can't say nothing on whether he cared about her or not, but I do know that he right near drunk himself to death after she went down into the ground, and I was almost afeard I warn't going to have either of them no more.

The tears kept running down ol' Muff's face, one by one, something like a light rainfall. They left clean streaks down his cheeks, cutting tiny paths through the dirt. I didn't know if he wanted me to say anything more or not, so I settled for keeping my trap shut. Sometimes that's the best way.

Well, by and by Muff's little sniffs turned into great big sobs, and he pulled out a handkerchief from his front coat pocket and swabbed at his face with it. But the handkerchief was already kinder mucked up, it seems, and it only turned the clean wet streaks into muddy ones. And the more he dirtied up his face, the more he swabbed, till he was sobbing and swabbing himself into a storm. It would have been a little funny, if it warn't so dismal to see him carrying on so. After a bit I made him put the handkerchief aside so I could wipe his face proper with my shirtsleeve. He blessed me through his wails and I told him it warn't no trouble, I just wished he wouldn't go on crying. Well then he started apologizing for his misery, and I realize that warn't no good either, so I told him it was all right, and if he might like to talk about things, well, I'd do my best to listen.

Muff he seemed touched by the offer, and bawled some more, and tried to hug me, so I let him. He wailed out some things I couldn't understand, he was sobbing so, and I just kept nodding and patting him on the back all gentle-like. We must've been something to see, though speaking for myself I can't say I mind it no one saw. It took well near ten minutes before Muff was able to pull hisself together, but I stuck with him all that while out of pity. Finally he snuffled his last, took a big heaping gulp of air, and gave a sigh to break a feller's heart.

"I reckon maybe I am just a bit still drunk," he muttered then, when it was all over and done. He tried to smile at me, his eyes all red and watered up, and dragged his coat sleeve across his face a final time. Then he stood, and held an arm out to help me up too.

"You're all right then, Muff?" I asked, taking his hand a little careful. I warn't a complete stranger to drunk men's tears, because of pap, but the whole thing had sort of scared me a bit.

"Yes, Huck, I'm all right. Sometimes a feller's just got to let go of it all, somehow." He set me on my feet, which warn't so hard for him, seeing as I'm a mite small for my age and not such a heavy load, and smiled again. "Say, Huck...how'd you like to pay them a visit with me?"

"Why, pay who a visit, Muff?"

"My missus and the baby."

Well my blood just run ice-cold right about then, as I hain't never been jumping outta my seat to meet no dead people. I warn't about to mess with that kinder truck. Why, hadn't he never heard of that old witch Missy Lowell in the next town over, who had burnt her whole house to a crisp and her own self inside of it while trying to talk to the dead?

All this was running through my head and more, and Muff he must a saw it, because he cleared me up right quick. "No, Huck, what I mean is visit them's graves," he said, laughing at me. "I ain't no witch nor no sorceror-type, neither. I just meant to visit the graves is all."

"Oh," I says, all grateful. "Well, that does change it all then."

So we headed off for the graveyard. I was mighty glad it was daytime, because spirits are generly happier then, and'll leave you most alone. A feller hears a great deal of ghost stories in his lifetime, but there ain't none of them take place during the day, which just goes to show that in the daytime a graveyard's generly safe as a church—it's the nights you got to watch out for. Of course, a graveyard's always a right chilling place to a body, no matter the time, and so it was here, even in broad daylight.

The graveyard was about a mile or two away from town, I reckon, up on a hill that slowed you down once you got to it. As the hill got steeper and steeper, your feet would drag slower and slower, and the grass would grow longer and longer, till it seemed that time had either stopped, or else sped along its way without you. By the time you cleared the hill and stood at the top, all that was left was just a miserable, aching feeling of forgottenness that just flooded the whole place. The fence around the graveyard was so crooked, it didn't keep no one in nor out, and plenty of the graves themselves was so old, they'd sunken into the earth like the cheeks on the face of an ancient man. And years and years and years of rain and dirt and wind had just about wiped the old wooden headboards clean (there warn't no proper gravestones), so that whatever names was painted there before, couldn't be seen now, hardly. Them fellers what'd been robbed of their lives was robbed of their names, now, too, and it was dismal to think of all of them nameless ghosts going round—powerful dismal. It was enough to make a body shiver in fear, though it was middling warm without a chill in the air. I grabbed at the little white feather in my pocket, hoping it'd protect me if one of them spirits just so happened to get ornery.

Muff he seemed to know where he was going, and I wondered did he visit often, if he knowed where to find the grave by heart. Why I had been here often enough, because graveyards is good for certain tricks like getting rid of warts or getting the bad luck off'n something, but every time _I_ come I forget where most everything is. One time I buried an unlucky broken pocketwatch under an old twisty tree, to get the bad luck off of it, but by the third night when it come time to dig it back up again—laws-a-me, I never _could_ find that old twisty tree, nor the pocketwatch neither.

But Muff could find his way around easy. He led me through the tall grasses, through a couple of boggy areas, and down to a little, patchy clearing where there was a wooden board not quite so eaten up as the others. He read it out to me—Henrietta Potter, it said, and Nellie Potter under it. Nellie was the baby, he told me, a poor, shriveled little thing who never even took her first breath. It made me sorrowful to hear it, and I could see it affected Muff to talk about it, so I didn't say much. Looking at the sad old grave, I wished I'd brung flowers, to lay on it, you know; but the best I could do was tear up some of the long grass and kinder sprinkle it over the dirt. Made it look a little greener, if nothing else.

Muff he was beginning to tear up again, and I was reminded of the mouse—only a human being, or a pair of them, is a long sight greater than a little varmint like that, and so it was a heavier matter. But he warn't blubbering this time—they was quiet tears, and I pretended not to notice them. Still, I could see now they warn't just the tears of a drunk man, but those of a man in pain. I almost wished other folks could see him like this, just so they would know that underneath all that drunken foolishness and general low-down coarseness, there was a feller inside who'd seen the worst of life, and been hurt by it. And who could say how he might've turned out, if only he'd been dealt a better lot? If he hadn't a lost his missus, and his baby, well maybe he never would've gone a-drinking, and then why maybe Muff Potter would've been a respectable man. Some folks think a feller deserves every hard lot he's thrown in life—that every bad thing that happens was tossed down from the sky as punishment—but I reckon it ain't so. Sure, some things is reaped from what you sow, as you may say, but not _all_. Did Mr. Jesus Christ deserve it when they tacked him up on that tree? How many innocent folks d'you figure were vacationing in Sodom-an-gomorrah when the Almighty crisped them up? The way I see it, things ain't never fair, and a feller can't never be blamed for being down on his luck.

Something had been sorter tugging on my mind since we'd got here, and I glanced at Muff to catch his attention. He was still gazing at the grave with melancholy eyes, so I pulled at his sleeve gentle till he looked at me.

"Say, Muff, you can read, can't you?"

"Why...sure Huck, well 'nuff, I reckon. Why?"

I shuffled a bit with my toes in the dirt and asked if he could help me find the name Susanna Finn in the graveyard. Muff he smiled real soft and patted me on the head and said he would.

It took us maybe more'n half an hour to find it, since the graves was all scattered willy-nilly everywhere, and I reckon we might've scoured the same places more than once without meaning to. I s'pose it warn't really _me_ doing any searching, just Muff, really, seeing as I couldn't read and couldn't tell one grave from another. I got to feeling a little embarrassed, that I was making ol' Muff hunt up and down the graveyard on my account. But Muff he was plenty friendly about it, and kind of talked me through the search, saying things like "no, 'tain't this one" and "let's keep looking." But finally we come to it, this tired little slab of cheap-looking wood pushed into the dirt, and Muff he looks at the name painted on it and doesn't say nothing, but looks at me, real meaningful-like, and claps me on the shoulder gentle.

Some graves they've got writing on them like "beloved mother" or "will be missed by all," but when I ask Muff to read mam's grave aloud, I see it don't got nothing on it but her name and the year she was born and the year she died. I hadn't seen it since the day they buried her, as pap he never had a mind to come back and see it, and well I reckon I'd just never given it a thought. All it was was just a board in the ground anyhow, with words on it that I couldn't read, and it warn't like I could really ever see her again. And yet, it did give me such a strange sort of feeling to stand on the ground where she was buried. Why, her _bones_ was underneath my feet. I shuddered.

I looked around myself, at the trees nearby and the general form of the landscape, and then it all came crashing into me, like the water when you stand in a river against the current. There was pap and me, standing there all solemn as they lowered her coffin in on ropes, and shoveled heaps of dirt on her, and pounded her headboard into the ground. Pap he stood silent and sober as a statue, and watched the whole thing with stony eyes. So still he was, that he didn't even notice when I tucked my small hand in his—or if he did, he didn't acknowledge it. I don't know why I done it, I was always so scared of him. But I reckon it was because my mother had never wished him no harm, though they had always hated each other so, and I could see it was going to be just the same with me.


	5. Wicked Men and Angels

After we left, I led Muff back to the riverside and let him have one of the fish I'd catched, to thank him for helping me find the grave and to ease his load a little. Muff he thanked me, and told me I were a good soul, and started to head on his way. But after a few steps he pauses, and looks back at me all warm.

"Say, Huck...if my little girl was alive today, I'd only hope she'd a turned out just like you," he says, smiling solemn.

Well it most broke my heart to hear it. He wished _his_ girl could've been like _me_? My cheeks run hot and I looked down at the dirt, all embarrassed. "I don't reckon I agree, Muff," I told him. "There warn't never a boy wickeder than me, you know."

Muff he shook his head and said he didn't believe that. Two times he told me. Then he asked how old I was, to which I said I was coming on twelve pretty soon, if I remembered right. I was kind of confused why he was asking, but I knowed in a second.

"Twelve," Muff repeated, thoughtful. He nodded his head. "Twelve. Why, that's just about how old she'd be today, if she was here now." He looked on me soft for a moment, like it warn't _me_ standing before him, but his very own flesh and blood. Then he smiled a sun-bright smile, one that just about cleared off all the gloom he'd shown before, and walked away.

Poor Muff. I watched him fade into the distance, over the riverbank and off toward the next town where he hoped to find work. Even after he'd gone some yards away, I could still hear him whistling as he went. Poor, poor Muff.

I hoped I wouldn't see him again soon, because if I did, then that would mean he hadn't found work and was still down on his luck. But of course, in the back of my mind, I knowed better than to think Muff would go and make something of hisself. It wouldn't be very long at all before he came back to St. Petersburg, to raise hell and to pester folk with his drunkenness. It was just the way of things. I seen Muff cry and cry and promise to do better loads of times, and, well, he warn't no better off now than the first time he done it. It made him seem such a miserable cretur, always trying again and again to do good but then always winding up back at the start. Most folks thought it was a tired story, I reckon, and just allowed that ol' Muff would never fix hisself, and that was why they treated him so awful.

Me, I was kinder torn up about it myself. On the one hand, I couldn't help but feel sorry for Muff, whenever I see him cursing his wickedness and wishing to be a good man. I sure knowed how that was. But on the other hand, it made me kind of disappointed whenever I see he couldn't change. Pap at least was honest about hisself, and knowed he'd be a drunk forever, and didn't set up no false expectations.

But Muff...well. As much as I liked him, sometimes I'd get to feeling disgusted with him—sometimes even more disgusted than I was with pap. See, I didn't have no hope for pap, because pap didn't care to change hisself. But Muff _did_ , and I reckoned that if he only tried hard enough, why he could do it easy.

Of course, I could think such things, but I knowed I warn't in no place to judge. I was just as bad and full of sin as either Muff or pap, being natural born to it and all. And I couldn't much change no better'n they could. Everyone said so, and I knowed it. When I told Muff I was the wickedest boy alive, I sure warn't the first to say it. I'd heard it from all the mothers and the fathers and the preachers and the teachers. I'd heard it from the boys and girls, even, and even from the ones that liked to play with me. Why, most of them only liked to play with me because they knew I was wicked, and it thrilled them.

Sometimes, I wondered whether folks was born wicked, or if they was made so. I reckoned it went both ways. Muff, it seemed, was made wicked by the things that happened to him. But pap and me I think was always this way. It was in our blood.

Well all of a sudden I feel right scared, and kind of foolish, and I thrust my hand into my trousers pocket to take up the little white feather. I didn't see how mam _could_ take any stock in me now, if she really _was_ an angel—and worse yet, I begun to think that maybe she didn't take no stock in me _then_ , either, when she was just a person. Why I'd been in the line of mischief almost since the day I was born, and when me and mam and pap all lived together I'd run away from home most every week because I couldn't stand it there, and then mam she'd have to go and find me. I must a run poor mam all over St. Petersburg till she knowed every bush and tree. I reckoned I'd been something of a burden to her.

Well I got so dismal that I settled I wouldn't think no more about her, now. It didn't do a body good. So I got to making a fire instead, to fry up my fish with. It were tough business, setting a fire without a starter nor nothing, and it always took a few tries because the embers they would always blow out before you could get the flames coming, but if a body was hungry enough, and hadn't nothing else to do, he'd get it before long.

I didn't have no pan, because the last one I'd lifted got dropped into the river by mistake, and when I did find it a couple miles downstream it was all banged up and busted through and not worth having. So now my way was to pierce the fishes through with sticks, and hold them over the fire and turn them now and then. Pretty soon they was cooked up nice, and I had a meal fit for a king on my hands.

The fish tasted real good, but the taste was soured by my thoughts. I just couldn't think of nothing else but my mother. Even though the fish was hot and satisfied my hunger, I still felt cold and empty inside.

It was my mother who gave me my name. I know Huckleberry ain't a common sort of name, not like Thomas or Joseph, and most everyone laughs or thinks I've made it up when I tell it for the first time. One time Ben Rogers asked in front of everyone, "Now, just how drunk was your father when he named you, Huck?" and all the boys laughed, even me. But it was mam who named me, and whenever I was feeling blue she'd lift up my chin and say, "Do you know why I named you Huckleberry? Because I love huckleberries—and I love _you_." She could always cheer me up, easy, just by saying that. Why, I could almost hear her whispering it in my ear now.

It ain't just any woman who names her son after her favorite fruit. But then, my mam warn't like anyone else in the world. For just a second, all the fog cleared up in my head and I could see her, circling my face in her hands and smiling down at me, soft.

Soft. That was just the way ol' Muff had looked on me before he left. The picture of my mother got all mixed up with the picture of Muff, and they flickered in and out together until my head hurt and I was all confused.

Soft… It had been a long time since a body had looked on me like that. I knowed looks of pity, and looks of shame, but looks of softness and gentleness and...and love; that was different.

Soft. I went on eating. What sort of person smiles soft on a wicked boy? A wicked man, maybe, but an _angel_?

It was mercy that she smiled; considerable mercy. If only I'd done better to try and deserve it.

I almost choked on my fish when Tom Sawyer came a-running up and shouting my name. When I looked, he had a couple of books in his arms, so I figured he must a come running from school. His cheeks was all rosy and he was all out of breath.

"Laws, Tom, what's with you?" I says, startled, but I could barely get all the words out before Tom cut in.

"Huck, we're friends, ain't we?" He talked fast, and looked hard at me with a bright sort of gleam in his eye.

"Well, sure, Tom," I answered, a little uneasy. He still hadn't catched his breath yet and he was panting like a wild thing.

"Well, then what have you got to be lying to me for?" He set down beside me, or maybe dropped down beside me—he kind of just let himself fall, he was in such a fluster. As for me, I didn't rightly know what he was talking about.

"Lying to you? What have I ever lied about?" I asked.

Tom went all stiffish, and he sniffed like his feelings was hurt. "Well for one thing, you sure never told me about the murder."

I just about shot out of my skin. " _Murder_?! _What_ murder?" But Tom he didn't answer; he was too busy laying into me.

"Sick, you said! Shucks! That's always the way with you, Huck Finn—never any sense for storytelling!"

"Tom, you're just full of blamed nonsense! What in the world are you talking about?"

"Why, your own mother, Huck!" he said at last, shaking his head at me. "You never said it was your pap that done murdered her."

My mouth dropped straight open. _Pap_? What a heap of lies!

"Tom!" I cried, and was most about to murder _him._ "Pap he never did no such thing! She died all on her own account, you hear? Who ever told you such ridiculous truck?"

Tom he seemed surprised to see me getting so riled, and I reckon he really believed hisself. That didn't surprise me none—Tom always had a knack for believing the most darnedest things. But now he softened some and scratched at the back of his neck. "Well, everyone says so, Huck. I asked Johnny Miller did he ever hear of Huckleberry Finn's mother, and he said his father said your pap beat her to death."

My throat went all dry, like sand on the riverbank. I looked away.

"Well, that ain't what happened," I says, all quiet. "Pap can be right awful sometimes, but he wouldn't never do something as bad as all _that_. She got sick, Tom—that's all there is to it."

I might as well tell you it warn't the first time I heard it before; that yarn about pap killing my mother, I mean. Folks knowed what sort of a man my pap was, and they knowed he warn't above beating his own wife. And no one ever heard tell that Susanna Finn was sick—all they heard was she was dead.

See, pap he never trusted no doctors. He trusted them only as much as he trusted judges and lawyers and constabulls—which is to say, not a lick. The way he'd rage on about them! Doctors is thieves, he'd say, regular thieves. Don't know nothing and always looking to drain you of your money. Don't give a dern whether you live or die, so long as you're paying them.

So when mam fell sick, she was too scared to see a doctor, what with all the truck pap had told us. And anyways we couldn't afford one, even if she'd wanted one—pap's drinking just cleared us out most of the time. She wasn't so bad, at first. But then she started coughing and coughing, and next she got all hot and feverish and couldn't move. Pap should have called a doctor then, and I begged him to lots of times, but he tanned me for it. 'You want her to die?' he'd say. 'Doctors is fools and all they do is make money off'n sick folks—they don't never want no one gettin' better.'

What he did was he left her in the bed and barred the door. We was living in a house then, some old abandoned shack with one bedroom, and that was where he locked her. He'd slip in to give her some bread and some water during the day, but that was all. By and by she just stopped eating—I knowed because for the last two weeks the bread in her room stayed the same bread, rock-hard and untouched. Pap wouldn't let me go in, because he warn't about to let me get sick, too, but I snuck in sometimes and held her hand and talked to her anyways. I guess pap just figured my mother would get better all by herself.

Nobody knowed mam was sick, except for me and pap. I had some foolish notion that if I told anyone she was sick I'd bring bad luck on her, and Pap I guess he just didn't advertise. I reckon some folks might have thought it strange that my mother warn't to be seen nowheres. But as a rule, people just didn't pay the Finns much mind.

Well, a month went by, and she died in that bed. And that was when pap finally had a mind to call a doctor, when she was already dead and all. It come as a shock to most people. The whole thing had a kind of mystery to it, and some folks was dead convinced that it was pap who killed her. It got so that pap had to skip town, and unlike now, he took me along with him. Things have calmed down, now, of course, and now most people agree my mam was sick, though they still look at pap and say he didn't help the situation none.

I guess I can't blame ol' Tom for latching onto a story like that. Tom he just wallered in that sort of thing, trajiddy and romance and whatnot, and he always seemed to think my life was like one of his adventure books. But a book is just a book, you know. Tom didn't know that.

"Well, I s'pose it _is_ a relief to me, then, that ol' Finn ain't no murderer," said Tom, sounding maybe just a little sorry that ol' Finn warn't no murderer. He kicked off his shoes and dipped his toes in the river. "Because they say he's come back into St. Petersburg—say, Huck, had you heard?"

No, I hadn't heard. My heart just about stopped, and down I fell, into the sand.


	6. Tugging the Rope

"Pap?! _Here_ , Tom?" I throwed myself from the ground and scrambled up, looking at him with a kind of alarm. Why, to think that just this morning I'd been so happy and free! I grabbed Tom's shoes and used them to stamp out my little fire, as a careful action, though now that I think of it such a little fire didn't give off much smoke anyway. But a body could never be too sure about anything, you know.

"Well, it's what they say, anyways," said Tom. "That he's finally out from being locked up and he's come home again. Jeff Thatcher said his pa said it was so. Your pa's been jailed up in Goshen these three months—surely you knowed _that_."

I shook my head, because I hadn't knowed it, but then again I warn't much surprised by it either. When pap was in town, he was most always in jail, and when he _warn't_ in town, he was most always in jail too. I lost track of him so often that whenever I didn't see him for a while, I would say to myself either he's dead, or in jail somewheres. And pap he didn't seem to have a mind to die yet. I reckon he was dead-set on raising hell as much as he could, before he was actually sent there.

Tom he seemed a little surprised that I didn't try to keep track of pap. You see, he warn't much acquainted with having family you'd ruther not mix with. If'n I _was_ to keep track of him, it'd only be so I could avoid him, mostly. I didn't care for him any more'n he cared for me, but for someone who didn't care for me he sure tried to tie me down.

"Jeff said his pa saw your pa tramping into town early this morning," Tom said.

I shook my head, all full of amazement. "I been through town a couple times today and I hain't seen him once," I said. "Must be my feather protecting me."

"Your feather?"

"My feather." I took it out of my pocket to show him, and grinned a little. "I found it last night, and why I been rolling in luck ever since."

Tom held out his hand, so I let him take it to get a closer look. He shut one eye tight and turned the feather in his fingers. Then his face lit up considerable and he give me a smile. "Sa-a-ay, Hucky, you know what it means when you find a white feather."

"Sure I do, Tom. Everyone knows it."

"Do you reckon it's your mother thinking of you?"

I got to feeling a little bashful when he said it. I pretended surprise and made as if I hadn't give the thing much thought.

"I... _may_ have reckoned so."

" _May_ have!" Tom cried, getting more and more full of spirit. "Why Huck, it's as good a sign as any!" A body would almost think the feather was _his_ discovery, the way he carried on. He was almost all a-glowing with excitement. "It's her, all right. Imagine, you finding this feather just as your pap is coming back into town! It's your mam thinking of you, Huck. It's a regular angel feather is what it is."

"It could also just be a chicken feather," I said, not yet willing to be wholly solid about the thing. "Jim Hollis' pa owns a coop of chickens and he lives pretty near where—"

Tom he didn't even let me finish. He shook his head at me and looked at me kinder sad, like he pitied me. "Huckleberry Finn, you ain't got a speck of imagination in you. What would you ruther it was? A chicken feather or an angel feather?"

"Couldn't it be both? Maybe mam used her angel pow'rs to blow a chicken feather to me. You said yourself that not all angels got wings."

"Now hold on just a minute, Huck; you've got it all wrong. Not all angels got wings when they're down here on earth. But when they're in heaven, they've _all_ got wings."

That didn't make no sense to me. Why would angels need wings if they was already up in the sky? Seemed to me wings would be a whole lot more useful to angels who was down here on the ground, and I told Tom so. Tom he couldn't answer, so he told me I was an ignorant blamed fool and didn't know nothing. I allowed I'd just let it set. It was never any use to argue with him afterwards.

"Well, no matter what kind of feather it is, it can't protect me forever," I said, looking out towards the trees on the other side of the river. "I got to hide from him. Pap I mean. Or else he'll be a-hiding _me_." I shivered, and all of a sudden I warn't here, but _there_ —I swear I could feel the welts and bruises coming up under my skin already. I had to shake myself out of it, and even then my heart was a-pounding wild.

"I sure know how that is. Aunt Polly hides me too."

I looked over. Tom was kicking his feet in the water and having a grand old time. He'd found a water snake swimming near the bank and he was poking at it with a stick.

"But that's different, Tom."

"How so? A hiding's a hiding."

"Well, for one thing, I expect your old lady don't just whup you for nothing. And I expect she just raps you a little bit with her hands. Pap he'll tan me till I'm black and blue all over, just because he feels like it."

"I was most black and blue after she whupped me for locking Sid in the cupboard," Tom offered. The water snake tried to get away, but Tom drug him back toward the bank.

"And just think of it, Tom. Your Aunt Polly's a little old lady who I reckon couldn't do much more than squash a fly. But pap whups _hard_ —even when he's dead drunk he whups hard."

"Aunt Polly whups pretty hard, too." He coiled the water snake round the stick and lifted it from the river.

"But nowhere near pap, Tom." I shivered again and looked down at the fish I'd been eating. I warn't hungry no more.

"Well, all right. Say, Huck, you'll do me a favor, won't you?" Tom looked over at me, untroubled as anything. I'll be hanged but you never see a boy as cool as Tom Sawyer. It warn't no use to tell him anything, sometimes.

"You can do yourself a favor," I told him, looking away. The way he carried on didn't much make a body want to help him. But Tom Sawyer was Tom Sawyer, and I never know how he done it, exactly, but he had ways of roping fellers into things.

"What! After I gave you that thimble, Hucky? After I've been such a friend to you?" Tom he looked downright insulted and kind of ashamed of me, and I couldn't stand it whenever he made like that. "It ain't such a big favor, Huck—I promise."

He was looking at me sorrowful, too, now. And the thimble!—I'd most forgot about the thimble. That was in my pocket, too, along with the apple stem. It was such a nice thimble. I wondered if he might make me give it back if I didn't help him. That put things in a bit of a new light; Tom's thimble was about the prettiest thing I owned, now that he'd give it to me. Thinking it over, I reckoned I couldn't much blame him for being so cool. He always called me ignorant, but there was just some things I knowed that Tom didn't—and I wished he never would. Well all right, I was convinced enough.

I turned back to Tom and fixed him a close look. "How about you tell me what it is, and maybe I'll listen."

"All right," said Tom, grinning with victory. He set the water snake back in the river and started tormenting it afresh. "I want us to fight, and I want you to let me lick you. That's all."

I almost laughed. Tom he was some bigger than me, though we was about the same age, and he could lick most any boy in the village—but not me. I reckon I was just too slick for him, on account of I'd got to be pretty good at dodging hits from pap. It hurt Tom's pride a little, I think, but he always found a way to be proud of it anyhow. Ben Rogers said one time Tom made the other boys and girls pay a Sunday school ticket apiece just to see the bruises I give him. Why, I'd licked him on the very first day we met. When pap and me finally came back to St. Petersburg, three years after mam died, I bumped into Tom Sawyer for the first time on the road. I hadn't knowed him, and he hadn't knowed me, but first thing he says to me was, 'Bet I can lick you!' I told him he couldn't, and so he went for me. He give me a couple good thrashes and a black eye, too, but in the end of it, I licked him and made him holler 'nuff and then we became good friends.

Since then, Tom had tried to lick me loads of times, to get back his honor or something like that, but it was no use. He put too much of himself into throwing hits, and didn't take no time to be careful and dodge any—that was why I always won. Sometimes he'd ambush me when I warn't looking, and sometimes he'd find something to get angry at me about, but he'd never just plain-out _asked_ for a fight.

"Tom, you know well as I do that I can lick you any day. You ain't licked me once yet!"

"I know, Huck. That's why I'm asking you to _let_ me lick you."

" _Let_ you? That ain't fair, Tom—why?"

Tom his cheeks got all pinkish, and the poor water snake suffered under all of his poking. "Well, see Huck, there's this girl called Amy Lawrence, and I reckon she'd be all over me if she knew I could lick Huckleberry Finn."

A girl! So that's what he was all on about. I shook my head at him.

"What _is_ it with you and girls, Tom Sawyer? They're all the same, anyhow. Crying and screaming all the time and so afraid to get their dresses dirty. They ain't worth shucks!"

Tom got pinker and he turned to look at me hard. The water snake made his escape. "Well—you're a fine one to talk! Just you wait till you meet one, Huck—actually meet one. _Then_ you'll see. 'Ain't worth shucks'—why, Amy Lawrence she has the softest brownest hair you ever did see—almost like a pony's! I yank at it most every day just so I can feel it."

I picked up a stone and skipped it out over the water. " _Yank_ , Tom? Is that how you get a gal to like you? _Yanking_?"

Tom he got even more flustered, and seeing as the snake was gone, he got up and took to skipping stones too. "Well—sure! It's how you get her attention, anyways."

"I don't know, Tom. I don't think a girl would like you for yanking her hair any more'n I'd like you for yanking mine. Which is to say, maybe you oughter try something else."

"Aw, go on, Huck. What do you know about girls? You said so yourself; you don't think they're worth shucks." Tom give a bad throw and his rock fell _plop_! into the water without making a single skip.

"Does a cat like it when you yank its tail?" I asked. "Does a cow like it when you yank its horns?"

"Oh, shut up. But you'll help me, then? Let me lick you just once, so I can impress her?"

I stopped in the middle of throwing, and paused to consider for a moment. I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid, but it warn't like I had nothing better to do. And Tom and me was good friends. I knowed he'd go and do me a favor if I asked him. I allowed I'd help him.

Then I thought a little more. Well, sure he had roped me into it, but that didn't mean I couldn't tug the rope a little myself.

"I don't know, Tom—will you give me something if'n I do?"

Tom he must have knowed I would ask, because he was already ready with an answer. "I'll give you a dry old ham bone I got from Bob Tanner, and a marble Joe Harper gave me."

I thought some more, tossing my stone up and down in my hand. Seemed a good trade to me, but I reckoned I'd tug a little more. "Well, what color's the marble?"

"Yaller."

" _Yaller_ , Tom? Shucks."

"Oh, fine, you stubborn thing. I've got a blue one too, if'n that's your fancy."

"Better. All right, I'll take." I throwed my rock and it skipped five times before sinking down. Tom followed right up with six skips—he'd been skipping all this time like his life depended on it, trying to make up for his bad one, I reckon.

"Good!" he chirped. "That settles it. How about Thursday, then? Day after tomorrow. Meet me after school, near the yard, and then we'll fight."

"Long as you bring the pay."

"Of course. Well, I reckon I'd better run along home, now." He throwed his last stone and dusted his hands off on his trousers.

"Don't you get whupped for talking to me again," I told him, then lowered my voice to a sour sort of whisper. "Since your Aunt Polly whups so powerful hard and all." Tom he didn't notice.

"I won't," he promised. "Goodbye, Hucky!"

"Goodbye yourself," I said, taking his shoes and tossing them at him. He laughed and put them on, then ran off with his books. I watched him go. For just a second, I wished I could be like him, with a home and a family and regular meals and hardly a care in the world. But then I remembered things like school, and church, and baths, and prayers, and clothes that itched, and then I warn't jealous no more.

I had to think of what to do about pap. I reckoned I could light out easy enough, but lord, how lonesome that would be. Tom, and Joe, and Ben, and all the other boys I liked to play with, they was all here in St. Petersburg. Besides, everyone in this town was used to me, even if they didn't like me none. If I tramped off to a different town, folks might think I was a nuisance, or else force me into a home I didn't want no part of. And that wouldn't be no good.

I could hide out in the woods for a while maybe. But I couldn't stay out of town forever, as I fed myself mostly by hooking things here and there. Sure I could find food out here if I had to, but then there was corn-pone and ham and pie and melons in the village, and there was only fish and nuts and berries and roots out in the woods. And even if I could find some wild roots and nuts and things to eat, there warn't no hope of finding any wild tobacco. I'd have to go back to town sometime, or else give up smoking. A general feeling of doom passed through me.

Well, that settled it without a question. I'd go back to town. Or maybe I'd just go long enough to lift some tobacco, and then light out for the woods. And then I'd hide and wait till pap got throwed in jail again, or killed, or drownded. I considered praying for him to get smited, with lightning and all, but I knowed that was too wicked, even for me.

But the more I thought about it, the more I hated the idea of hiding. It was almost as bad as being shut up in a house—a body in hiding didn't have his freedom. All right, so maybe I wouldn't hide _all_ the time, then. But blame it all if I warn't going to try and keep out of his way when I could.

My stomach was a-jumping all over, but I made myself finish dinner anyway. I knowed I was most always hungry, and if I didn't eat now I would be like to regret it later. After I was done I wanted so to have a good smoke, but like I said, I was fresh out of tobacco. Well I was fretful and nervous and said to myself I couldn't do without one, so I took out my corncob pipe and chawed on the end of it and tried to pretend there was tobacco in it. That warn't no use—pretending warn't never any use to me. I wanted to cry. I wished I had followed Muff out of town. I kept on thinking about how he had looked at me soft, and how he had seen his little girl in me, and how I'd seen my mam in him. How was it that one pitiful drunk could be such a good man and a blest friend besides, while another pitiful drunk was only a rascal who cussed and beat and never had a kind word most of the time? 'Drink is the devil,' those temperance folks always said, but I wondered if maybe the devil warn't in the drink, but in the man, and the whiskey just sort of brung him out and spurred him on.

I knowed for myself I wouldn't ever touch the stuff. I seen too much of what it did to pap, and I didn't like it.

"Wouldn't it be fun one day to get railing drunk?" Tom had asked the fellers one time, and all the boys chimed in that they thought it would. They was giggling kinder bashfully, all shy that they dared to be so sinful.

"Drunk fellers always seem to be having the grandest time, even when they's falling all over themselves," added Bob Tanner, and the boys all giggled some more.

"Well, _I_ dasn't," said Joe Harper. "My ma would skin me alive." A general cry of 'oh, shucks!' rose up, and the boys all cuffed him, and made him keep quiet.

Besides Joe, they was all in general agreement that it would be good fun to get drunk and raise hell, just to try it for once. Then they all turned to me and wanted to know if I ever drunk before, because I'd done a lot of things they hadn't and they all looked up to me for it.

"Oh, hang the stuff!" I said, getting a little angry. "I never drunk in my life, and I _won't_. It ain't as grand as you all think it is. I'll smoke and chaw and cuss if I've a mind to, but I won't never drink. Whiskey ruined my life before I was even born. You think I'd want to mess with it now?"

Well, that put the thing in a different light for Tom and Bob and everyone else. All the boys filled up with shame, and one by one they slunk away to talk about other things, all except for Joe Harper, who stayed standing by me.

Joe he looked at me, kind of unsure what to say, but finally he clapped me on the shoulder, and said, "I think it's real good of you, Huck. Folks say you'll end up like your father, sure, but I don't reckon I believe it."

So I s'pose there was one thing my mam could take stock in, at least.


	7. I Steal From a Thief

Well, I fretted myself up and down on the riverbank, all lonesome and nervous and frightened. I wanted to forget my troubles by going back to town and hunting up some of the boys to play with, but I was scared I might find pap instead. I reckoned it might be safer to go back when it was dark—he'd probably be in the tavern then, and then he'd just drink till he drunk himself asleep.

So I allowed I wouldn't go back until sunset, and tried to put in the time with other things till then. First I went swimming, and swum and swum till I was sick of it. Then I clumb up the highest tree I could, stark naked, and wondered what it'd be like to be a bird. I didn't make a very good one—birds is supposed to eat bugs, but the bugs they just about _devoured_ me, and every inch of me, too. Afterwards I put my clothes back on and thought I'd settle for a smoke, but then I remembered I didn't have any tobacco, so I cussed something considerable till I was all cheered up. Then I took everything out of my pockets and set them on a rock, and got my fishing pole too, and set that there, and took in-vuntory. Says I, "These is all the things that Huck Finn owns," and I felt pretty rich then. It warn't much fun all by myself, though; it's more fun when you've got a group of boys together. That way you can all trade things between you, and if it's done right, everyone leaves feeling a little richer than he was before. But generly Tom Sawyer always pulls some trick and leaves a bit richer than everyone else.

Well, I was able to manage for a couple of hours or so, but after that I got to feeling all uneasy. You see, it ain't no use to try to take your mind off something, because you _know_ you're trying to take your mind off something, and that just ruins it. The whole time, the thought of pap was darkening over me like a shadow—he was like a ghost, just haunting me. I felt I wouldn't be comfortable until I actually seen him for myself. Maybe it warn't even him at all, but just a man who looked like him, and maybe Jeff Thatcher's pa was mistaken. Curiosity was just chawing me up inside, but not the happy kind like you get when you go exploring. No, it was curiosity of a dreadful sort—like poison, almost. I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't fly, and by and by I got to feeling so sick and miserable that I couldn't do nothing but set and worry.

Well, says I, this won't do. Why, it's no way to live, letting worry eat you up all the time. I have to find pap before he finds me first, and that way I can get a good look at him and know what I'm watching out for. And then I felt satisfied, or begun to feel that way, anyway.

I wondered if pap was looking for me at all, and if so, how easy it'd be for him to recognize me. It had only been three months since he seen me last—I didn't reckon I'd changed much in three months, except maybe my clothes had got a little more ragged. I thought about trying to disguise myself, but I didn't have nothing else to wear. Maybe I could rub dirt and mud in my face so no one could see it was me.

Well soon I realize how foolish _that_ was. I was always all caked up with dirt as a regular thing, so it wouldn't make much of a difference. And anyway, pap might be able to recognize me by the dirt alone, as I was the filthiest boy in the village. Even if my face was hid, I'd still stick out; I was also the only boy in the village who wore clothes made for full-grown men, and I always kind of looked like I was drownding in them. I begun to wish that maybe I'd lifted that coat after all.

Well, if I couldn't hide who I was, then there was only one thing to do—I'd just have to be sneaky about it. I took a great big breath, and layed I'd sweat it out.

So I headed off to town. Lots of times on the way there, I would get scared, and say, never mind all this—let's run back and hide, but then I would make myself swallow it down and press on anyway. Once I got into town, I was _all_ a fright, and my knees got to knocking. I kept near the shadows when I could, and peered round corners, and made sure to slink around careful. There was plenty people around, minding their own businesses, but I dasn't ask anyone if they'd seen my pap, because I didn't feel comfortable talking to respectable folks. But by and by I come across Uncle Jake, who belonged to Ben Rogers' pa, and I felt comfortable talking to him. So I asked.

"Oh, yes, I seen him," said Uncle Jake. "He been prowlin' round all day. Kinder like an ole tomcat."

"Do you reckon he's a-looking for me?"

"I don't know. But I spec he's lookin' for something. You's welcome to hide out in the hayloft if you like."

I thanked him, but I told him that I aimed to find pap and get a good look at him. Uncle Jake said there warn't much to tell; pap looked mean and dirty and almost something like Ol' Scratch in the flesh—so then he was just his usual self. Uncle Jake told me to look near the general store. Then he wished me luck and went away with a bucket of water in each hand, and I went on with the search.

I headed toward the general store like Uncle Jake had told me to. Part of me was scared I'd see pap, but then part of me was worried I _wouldn't,_ kind of like when a spider gets into your clothes—a body feels better when he knows where the thing _is,_ as opposed to when he don't. As I got closer and closer, creeping along the walls of buildings and such, my heart went a-pounding fit to bust. I was so occupied, I almost got run over by a man leading his horse. The feller yelled at me, and said some harsh words, and I would have said some harsh words back, but I was too shaky to bother. I thought I'd die before I ever reached that store. Once I got within thirty feet of it I was sure I'd made a mistake, and allowed I'd hightail it out of there—but then I risked a look anyway, and even though I'd half-expected to see him there, I near fell over in terror.

It was pap, by jingoes; clear as day. I could recognize him from any distance. He was all rags and long straggly hair, like me, only his hair was black as a grizzly's; black like bats' wings and dark caves and death itself. He set against the wooden support of the store with a sort of slouch in his back, like a tired old sack of flour that nobody'd touched for years. One of his legs was bent, but t'other was stretched out so I could see the heel of his boot. He had a cross there made of two iron nails. It was meant to ward off the devil and such, but I don't know if it ever did him any good. As long as I knowed him he always made a cross on any pair of boots he owned, and all my life it'd been lucky for me because that way I could read his tracks like he was an animal.

He set pretty still, now, so I reckoned he was sober, and that meant I had to watch out. Sure, I was younger and springier, but pap had _such_ long legs compared to mine, and when he was sober he could run after me and snatch me up easy. It warn't no matter to him that I was an older boy now and might raise a fuss—he could throw me over his shoulder and pitch off just as easy as he could when I was a mere pup. Besides, I was smaller than the other boys. I reckon folks would turn their heads if they saw someone carrying off, say, Joe Harper; partly because folks was fond of him, but also because he was pretty tall. Joe had started sprouting up by the inch, lately, and all the boys was jealous. Yessir, it would be a pretty awkward scene to see someone hauling Joe off. Whereas anyone could take me for a boy only three-quarters my age, and it warn't an uncommon sight to see mothers or fathers carrying off their children when the littl'uns got fussy.

I sure wished that _I_ would sprout up, because I reckoned that once I begun to look like a growed-up man, pap would quit whaling me so much, or at least lay off a little. Why, maybe once I was growed, he would let me alone entirely. He always said it was his job to bring me up right, so I wouldn't get big-headed and puffed-up like so many folks was nowadays, and so I'd know how to make my way in a world where I warn't worth the dirt under my feet. Maybe once the bringing up was all over and done with, that'd be the end of the cowhiding.

But after I thought about it some more, I allowed I knowed better than that. Pap he would tan me forever—or at least, until I got so big and strong that I could fight, and he got so old and weak that he couldn't. Well, that would be a good long while. I didn't reckon I'd be much growed even ten years from now, and pap the ol' devil never seemed to run out of steam. Why, he was almost fifty, with several years of whiskey running through his veins, and yet he could still knock a man down easy. I seen him do it. Maybe he didn't look so fearsome _now,_ but just you see him when he was riled up, or drunk, or both—he was really something to behold.

Well, of course I couldn't leave, now that I'd seen him. I edged closer and hid myself behind Johnny Miller's house about twenty feet away, then fell to watching.

Uncle Jake had called the old man a tomcat, and I reckoned it was about so. Pap had a gleam in his eye that made me think of a mouser about to pounce. It just sent shivers down my spine. He looked like he was scheming something, but I couldn't figure what; and what he could be just hanging around there for, I couldn't think. He didn't seem to be causing no trouble, and that was unusual. Sometimes he'd address folks, and hold out his hands to them, and seemed to ask them for money, but that surprised me too. It warn't like pap to beg. He was a dignified chap, and high above begging—stealing and thieving was _his_ way. But wouldn't you know it, it appeared he was doing just that: begging. He'd fell pretty darn low, it seemed.

But then I see there was more to it. He warn't begging from _everybody,_ but only from the ladies, and even then he warn't begging so much as he was pestering and bullyragging. He only went for the younger ladies, too, because the older ones had been around this town for a considerable long time and warn't afraid of him. But the young women, and the little gals, _they_ was scared of him, and I don't blame them one bit.

So then I knowed pap hadn't lowered his pride; he was stealing and thieving, all right. First he would just ask for the money, it seemed, and some of the gals was scared enough and foolish enough to go ahead and give it to him. But the ones that didn't, he'd get to hounding them. He never laid a finger on them nor nothing, but he'd stand up tall, and look at them hard, and kind of smile, and say, 'Hain't got no money; is that so? Well, then what are you going into thish-yer store for? You wouldn't let a feller spir't starve. No, I don't reckon you would. A poor feller with a son he ain't seen for months. Be a good soul, won't you? There, now; that's the way.' And then he'd cackle, and stuff the money in his trousers, and start afresh.

It made me feel downright disgusted—as if a body could believe he meant to spend that cash on food, and not drink! And there he was, using his son he hadn't seen for months as an excuse—I reckon if you put me and a jug of whiskey in front of my pap, he'd go for the whiskey every time. I wanted to go over there and bust the whole thing up, but I dasn't, and anyways I didn't know how to. Once he seen me, I'd be gone. He'd probably set me up to make me look sorry and poor and pathetic, so as to rake in even more money from those women-fools.

Well, he carried on like that for quite a long time; near an hour, I reckon. He must have cheated every young lady in St. Petersburg. Well, by and by Mary comes up—Tom Sawyer's cousin, she is. I felt awful sick to see _her_ a-coming up, because she'd always been mighty good to me, whenever she see me, and Tom said she always put in a good word for me when it come to it. One time she seen me loafing around a melon cart, and I s'pose she guessed I was going to steal one of them, so she called me over and bought one for me so I couldn't. And she always smiled at me whenever she seen me around, even though most folks preferred to just pretend I warn't there. I sure wished pap would leave her alone, because she was the most generous girl I knowed, and pap he would steal her blind without her hardly thinking too much of it.

It was a mighty risk, but I sneaked closer, and slipped into the alley just beside the general store, right as pap stopped her and started talking to her. Why, I was close enough to throw a stone at them if I wanted to. I listened harder than ever.

Pap give her his usual bullyragging speech, the one I'd heard near a thousand times since I'd found him here. It was just peculiar the way he said it—the words was sorrowful, and almost polite, even. But he had _such_ a way of talking that made a body think he meant to skin you alive if you didn't do as he asked. I knowed that way of talking; he'd used it on me lots of times. Says I, Mary'll fall for it, sure. Well, finally, pap finishes up his speech and I see I was dead wrong.

Instead Mary gives him a gracious smile and says, all polite, "I'm sorry, but I can't give you anything, Mr. Finn. I'm to buy a sack of cornmeal for my mother." Imagine— _Mr._ Finn! I never hear such a thing. Why, that was more than pap ever deserved in all his life! Mary had more kindness in her that what was good for her.

Pap warn't set back none. He just went to pestering even harder. "Oh?" growled he with a smile, though it warn't what could be called a smile, really. It was a wolf's smile; a snake's smile. "Well, I expect you've got more'n enough at home to eat already. Your cupboard's all full, likely, and me a poor man without hardly a crumb. Is that any way to treat a neighbor of yourn? Not very Christian of you, I don't think!"

Well, Mary warn't set back none, either. I was all in a sweat to see who would win. "You might try the church," she said, gentle. "They've always got bread there for whoever needs it."

"Bread that's stale as a sermon," pap answered, spitting in the dirt, and I had to agree. I'd had to try the church myself when I was out of luck, and the bread they had there was always rock-hard—no use to you if you was hungry, but maybe if you needed something to hammer some nails with. "And anyways, you won't find me a-setting foot in there. It's a fools' sanctuary."

"I'm very sorry," Mary said again, and tried to get past. But pap he got in her way, and when she tried to move, he got in her way again. Well, she didn't wilt one bit, but just asked him if he could please let her through. My, but she was solid, as solid as any feller I see. She warn't even that old—not yet eighteen, I reckon, and I was amazed to see how well she stood. She tried to squeeze through, then, but it warn't no use; he wouldn't budge unless she give him something.

Well, he warn't even stealing now; just being mean, and I couldn't stand it. But what could _I_ do? I couldn't stop him all on my lonesome. I could go and fetch someone, maybe, and say there was this chap hanging around the general store and tormenting folks; but I warn't sure how long it would take me to find a constabull, and anyways pap might do something rash before then. I wondered why nobody did nothing about him—surely the shopkeeper might care that someone was keeping business from entering the store. And warn't it such a sorry sight to see pap putting these poor gals in such fixes? Like I said, there was plenty people around. I judged it was just that nobody wanted to deal with him—he was too ornery.

Well, it all happened so fast that if I'd blinked, I would have missed the whole thing. All of a sudden pap give a swing with his arm and just _belted_ Mary's purse clean out of her hands! It made the breath jump out of me—and out of her, too, I bet. The purse flew about five feet from them in my direction, and jingled when it hit the ground. Mary was in a shock, and so she couldn't do nothing, but pap he started to amble after it, and I saw him.

In that moment, I had a decision on my hands. I could keep where I was, and stay hid, and let pap take this honest gal's money. Or, I could put myself in danger and not let him have the chance. Well, I knowed which choice would be safer for _me,_ and keep me from trouble, but then would I be satisfied? It was that darned coat all over again—it was that darned angel feather, and my darned conscience. Says I to myself, look at all these folks walking about and pretending not to notice a thing! If I don't do nothing, well, at least I'll be in good company. But then I thought a little more, and wondered if maybe I was obleeged to do _something,_ since everyone else was standing about doing nothing.

Well, I never got to decide, because I had already decided before I made my decision—I darted out and grabbed that thing and _run._ I never turned to look back, no sir, but I knowed that pap saw me and knew me, because he called me by name as I flew by, and cussed me pretty bad as I lit out. Then I thought I heard him chasing behind me, though my heart was pounding louder than anything else, and that just flooded me with terror.

A body only ever realizes what a blamed foolish thing he's done, after he's gone and done it. Pap he'd catch me sure. It was that fear that pumped my legs even harder and faster till I was going at almost a horse's pace, and I most thought I'd kill myself before I ever got away. Speed was on pap's side, but I reckoned I could lose him by twisting and turning, so I made the craziest path I could. I flew behind houses, and off roads, and over fences, and through grasses; and I never stopped for nothing, even when I thought I'd die if I didn't get a rest. But pretty soon, after what seemed like hours and hours (but it was probably only minutes), I see where I was—I'd come to Ben Rogers' farm. I leaped over the fence and fairly fell into the field. When I looked out behind me, there was no one there—I'd lost him! I could have laughed for joy if I warn't so fagged out.

I had to lay down in the dirt for a few minutes, just to regain myself, but then my eyes went all ahaze and my chest burned like I was breathing fire. I swore I never run so hard in all my life, and that was the last thing in my head before I fainted dead cold, the purse still clutched tight between my fingers.


	8. The Thief Steals Me

The next thing I knowed, I found myself being shook awake, and there was Ben Rogers, saying, "Hello, Huck! Go on, Huckleberry; do get up." It was darker out than it had been, and the sun was almost starting to go down over the fields. Ben pulled me up and my legs felt like molasses, they was so weak. There was loose earth caked on my face from where I'd been a-laying—I rubbed some of it off.

Ben was about a year older than me and Tom and Joe, but he warn't like those big boys who scoff at the younger ones and won't have nothing to do with them. He liked us, and said we was full of excitement; life could get tolerable dull in this little town. He was always a chipper fellow, and good for raising spirits, so I was glad to see him. Presently he says, "You look a sight, Huck. Where'd you come from?"

"I was running from pap, since he's come back, but I reckon the danger's over now," I said, setting back down again because my legs wouldn't do nothing for me. "He was trying to steal a…" And then I trailed off and fretted some, because Mary's purse warn't in my hands anymore, and I almost feared I'd dropped it on the way. But then I looked about and found it setting only a foot behind me, and I was mighty relieved. I took it up and looked it over to make sure it was all right.

Ben set down with me. "Say, don't that belong to Mary? Tom's Mary, I mean."

I said that it did, and that I had to return it to her, and Ben he looked interested. So I launched into the whole story, about how I'd hunted for pap and found him in his ugly business, and how he'd cheated all the foolish ladies of the town, and how I'd nipped Mary's purse and run off before he could get to it. When I had told the whole thing, Ben shook his head.

"It's a shame he's come back to this town," he said, all full of disgust. "Ain't nobody in the whole entire village who wants him here. Taking money from women and girls! That's low—uncommon low. Men like that hain't got any right to be alive." When I didn't say nothing, Ben softened some and said he was sorry to talk so; after all, pap was my own father and Ben he couldn't blame me if I still cared for him. I told him it was all right—I didn't.

Then I brightened up, and since I'd already shown Muff and Tom, I asked, "Say, Ben, would you like to see something bully?" He said he would, so I took the little white feather from my pocket and showed it to him. He said it was a pretty thing, and I told him it was my mother who'd sent it to me, and that all sorts of wonderful things had happened since I'd found it—all except for pap showing up, of course, but maybe mam she couldn't help that. Still, I allowed there was more luck to come, and Ben was agreed. He said that last year he'd found a white feather just like this one, and so many jolly things had happened to him because of it; the shopkeeper's son give him a whole bag of candy, and he beat Tom Sawyer in spelling that week.

"Why, that's splendid, Ben; right splendid," I said, feeling all the more assured about my own fortunes.

Then I got to feeling curious. I knowed Ben didn't have a mother either, and he never talked of one. I wondered if maybe me and him had the same lot—but I warn't about to be no Tom Sawyer about it. Says I, kinder gentle, "Do you reckon that feather was from _your_ mother?"

Well, it warn't the right thing to ask. Ben his face got a little dark, and he didn't look quite at me, but frowned at the dirt some and drug his finger around in the earth. He was quiet for a long while. It got powerful awkward, and I was all in a sweat trying to come up with something new to talk of, when all of a sudden Ben he speaks up.

"No, because my mother ain't dead," he says, finally, in a low voice.

 _That_ was something to say. I frowned and asked, "Well...ain't she?" I couldn't make no sense of it, you see. If his mother warn't dead, then how was it that he didn't have one? But then I understands, because Ben explains:

"She left when me and Sally was little—just up and left. But that's just as well—I don't want to see her anymore."

 _That_ was something to say, too, and I couldn't hardly say nothing back. "Oh," says I, sounding sorry and dismal, and nothing more afterwards.

I wished I hadn't poked around in his business. It was sorrowful to see him so sad and quiet, and why, it made _me_ all sad and quiet to see him so. I tried to be cheerful and talk about something else, and Ben he tried just as well, but it warn't no use for me, and I think Ben he felt the same. We talked here and there, first about one thing and then t'other, but then the talk just got slower and slower until we warn't barely talking at all. We played with the dirt, and pulled at our clothes, and didn't look at each other, and the silence was so heavy and uncomfortable you could've choked a man with it. Finally I couldn't take it anymore, so I allowed I'd just hit the thing straight on. Says I, "You know, Ben, I wish all mothers and fathers would just behave the way they're meant to."

It was like pumping water—only trickles at first, but more of a stream after a time. Ben was quiet for a little more, but then he answered, and the talk begun to trip along a little easier after that.

"I agree," said he, looking out towards the sunset. "Plenty of times when I've gone to visit Joe, I've wished my ma could've been just like Mrs. Harper. So tolerable nice all the time, and makes the best pies."

"Oh, yes; I know about the pies," I agreed. "But I reckon mothers has all got their faults, somehow. Joe complains of his often enough."

"Maybe only because he's never had to do without one," Ben offered. "If all the boys has got a cake except one, you can bet there ain't none of them hungrier than the chap who's dropped his'n in the mud." I had to confess there was something to that; a body never knows what a thing's worth till he hasn't got it no more.

Well, I told Ben how sorry I was about his mother, because I thought it was an awful situation. Pap he didn't do me much good, but at least he had stuck by me when I was too little to take care of myself, and still called me his son. It was something else entirely when a body who's meant to be your family walks out of your life forever, and allows she wants nothing to do with you anymore.

Ben he didn't answer. I tried something else.

"You know what?" says I, getting all full of spirit. "Folks who ain't got any right being mothers and fathers should just set still. Or, once they've become such, and can't get out of it—well, then they ought to clean up!"

 _That_ kind of talk cheered him. He took like a fish to water.

"Why...that's right!" says Ben, starting to come alive again. "Boys and girls can't much help it whenever they don't do the right thing. But grown-up folks ought to know better. Otherwise, what's the use of them being grown-up?"

"Yes—I'm agreed!" I said, grinning wide. Then I thought of something splendid. "I tell you what, Ben Rogers. When you and me is grown-up, _we're_ going to do the right thing most all the time. We've seen all the mistakes, so I bet you _we_ won't make them, no sir!"

Ben his face just lit up like the stars. "No! No indeedy we won't!" he said, all excited. "And if we ever have boys and girls of our own, we won't _never_ be fathers to be ashamed of, will we, Huck?" Now there was something I hadn't thought of! "We'll be there, always, and give the littl'uns lots of hugs and kisses, and won't run off and leave—"

"Or get drunk—"

"Or fight and shout to raise the dead—"

"Or whale a boy till he's all over bruises—"

"Or ever do anything mean or bad that a grown-up person shouldn't do!"

"That's right," I cried, slapping him on the back, "by jings, that's right!" And we laughed, and hugged each other, and pushed each other around and rolled about in the dirt. Oh, it was grand! We'd do it, by Jimminy; we swore we would—we was going to be the smartest and most blameless men in the world when we was growed, and make up for our family's mistakes that way. It was a brilliant plan. We talked some more, about all the things we was going to do, and all the things we _wasn't_ going to do, and how we knowed so much better than all the folks before us. We even begun to see ourselves as having less of a hard lot, because maybe our situations was meant so we could learn from them. Providence sets everything up just so for a reason, Ben was saying; that was what the Good Book always said, and now he reckoned he believed it.

But by and by the thrill started to wear off, and we actually begun to think of the thing, and then it weighed heavy on us and we growed melancholy again.

We set back down, all slow, and pondered.

"...Oh, I don't know, Huck," said Ben at last. "It's awful hard to be good. Why, just yesterday I put a frog in Sally's dress pocket and laughed to hear her scream. And the day before that, I stole a penny off my pa and said I didn't know nothing about it."

I felt just as low. "Well, that's nothing to me, Ben—I wish I was _half_ as good as you. Three days ago I tossed rocks all through Mrs. Kearney's windows, because I was in an awful mood; and a week before _that_ I cussed up some church ladies who was giving me a hard time, and one of them right near fainted. I'd forgot that church ladies was such a delicate breed, you see."

Ben he looked at me anxious. "Do you reckon it'll be any easier once we're grown, Huck?"

"I don't think so," I told him, uncertain. "Otherwise there wouldn't be jails and things, for all the growed-up folks who can't do good no matter how they try."

Well, that settled it, then. We got quiet, and felt the truth squash our hearts—we warn't going to do much better than anyone else. For some reason, I thought of ol' Muff Potter. _Was_ there any point in trying to do good? And _could_ a body really rise up and do different from his mother or father? If all the mistakes could really be weeded out, generation by generation—well, then dad fetch it; there ought not to be any mistakes anymore. And yet, there _was,_ which seemed as good enough to say that we was doomed. I thought about it again—about wickedness being born to me, and in my blood. 'You keep still—I always kept still whenever _my_ pap gave me a good cowhide,' pap would say, and maybe his pap had said it before him, and maybe _his_ pap before him, and maybe on and on backwards through all the Finns that ever was. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, as the saying goes. Ben and me would grow till we were growed-up, just like our mothers and fathers had done, and then our chances would be just the same as theirs. The heavy silence come over us again like a shroud.

"...Well," I said, slow-like, "I don't reckon I ever much wanted to be a father, anyhow."

There warn't much to say after that. We set there in the quiet and had our own thoughts. Then Ben's sister Sally called for him, so he said goodbye to me and run off toward the house. We didn't give any more talk about being smart and blameless.

It was most near night now. The air had taken a kind of chill, and the clouds followed lazily after the disappearing sun so they could go to bed. A soft, cool breeze wafted itself through the field and made the grasses dance. A cricket saw it was getting dark and took up singing, and another one heard him and followed suit.

I looked at Mary's purse in my hands—it'd probably be best to return the thing now and cut down the chances of it getting lost or stole again. So I left the Rogers' farm and tramped off for Tom Sawyer's house.

As I walked, I wondered how I would give the thing back. I didn't want to bother nobody—I did plenty of that already just by setting around and breathing. It would be the best way if I could do it without having to knock on the door and talk to anyone.

Still, it would be a blamed foolish thing to leave it on their porch for her to find—I wanted it _not_ to get stole. But if I warn't going to leave it outside, then how in the nation was I to get it into the house without having to knock on the door and face whoever chose to open it?

 _Then_ I had it. I would sneak it in. I would climb into a window or something and leave it in her room, if I could figure which one it was. But then I warn't sure if I could, so I thought of a better way. I settled I'd just sneak into Tom's room and leave it there. I already knowed which window belonged to Tom, because sometimes I'd stand outside and meow for him (that was our signal) and then I'd see him climb out.

The streets was mostly cleared out, now, as all the people had gone home to have supper and go down to bed. But I kept a watchful eye out anyway, in case pap still had it in for me, and made sure to steer clear of the tavern. I was mighty glad when I'd got to Tom's house without running into any trouble.

Well, once I got there, I see there was a light on downstairs, and I could hear voices coming. Seemed to me they was Bible-reading or something, from the way it just droned on and on. Poor Tom. Bible-reading always seems to carry on for hours and hours. Well, says I, that's perfect; I'll just sneak up while they're all downstairs and leave Mary's purse on Tom's bed. Tom of course will recognize it, and give it to her, and that'll be that. I couldn't have thought of a better way, not if I'd thought and thought for a hundred years.

So I crept around to the left side of the house, and give it a look-over. First of all I see Tom's window was open—that was lucky. There was a woodshed on that side, and also the roof of a bottom-floor room that jutted out from the house. What Tom always did was he would jump down first to the roof that jutted out, and then down on top of the woodshed, and then down to the ground. So I allowed I'd do it backwards—I'd climb up on top of the woodshed, and then to the roof, and then into Tom's window.

I rubbed my hands together, and leapt, and caught onto the side of the woodshed and clumb up, and from there it was just pie. I reached Tom's window easy; I could climb just as well as those monkeys they've got in the circus. But a body oughtn't to be so confident all the time. Just as I was climbing in, my foot caught on the sill, and I tumbled into the room with such a clatter that my heart most stopped.

I set still, and listened—they'd all gone silent downstairs. Then Aunt Polly says, "Did you hear that?" and I begun to scramble. I figured I'd just set the purse on Tom's bed and leave, but wouldn't you know it, the derned thing had slipped from my pocket when I tumbled! I leaned out the window and there it was, a-laying on the little roof I'd used to climb up. Well, then I heard footsteps a-coming—I had to hump myself. I jumped out the window to get the purse, and got it. But then, my hands was so slippery with sweat that I couldn't climb back into the window! I got to feeling desperate. So, I wound up and hove that purse through the open window, and was about to make a run for it when I hears a jingly crash and a small cry of surprise. I froze, and thinks I to myself, now looky here, Huck, what a fine deed—you've gone and pinned someone in the face.

I was about to skedaddle, but then Mary pops her head out the window, so I see that it was _her_ that I'd hit. She had a candle in her hand, and she looked about, and said, "Huckleberry Finn, is that you?" At first I was all in a shock that she knew me, but then I figured that she must have seen the purse, and knowed I was the last to have it. She squinted some in the dark, out over my head, but then she looks down, and sees me. I still wanted to slink away, and I started to, but Mary stopped me.

"Oh, please don't go, Huck; I don't mean you any trouble," she said, all soft. Well, she _was_ such a sight, standing in the window like a picture in a frame. The candle in her hand lit her face in soft little flickers, and her white gown made her look like a queen. Her hair was down, and it looked nice—though I warn't about to go yanking it or nothing. She was a pretty girl, Mary was.

I'd been a-looking at her over my shoulder, but when I see she wouldn't let me go nowheres, I slowly turned myself all the way back round to face her.

"Did you return this, Huck?" she asked, holding up the purse.

"Yes'm," I said, kind of shy. I didn't want to look her in the face; it was too much. "And stole it, too—though only to keep pap from getting at it first."

"It was a noble thing," Mary said. "Mother reckoned you meant to keep it, but I wouldn't have blamed you, even if you had. It'll change her mind, when I tell her you've returned it, and never meant to steal it, either."

"Oh, please, Mary," I said, going all hot under my skin, "don't tell. I couldn't bear it. It's bad enough you catched me here—I meant to do it secret."

"Secret? Why?"

That _was_ a good question. I knowed the answer, but it warn't something I could say in words. It had to do with me, and who I was, and what people thought of me—but I didn't know how to say all that. So I made something up, or tried to, and said:

"Why...everyone knows what a hard lot I am. How d'you figure it would look if folks knowed I went around at night doing nice things for people? Everyone would look at me, and be ashamed, and think—'hm, bit of a slouch, that Huck Finn.'"

Well, she laughed, and she laughed, though she tried to keep quiet about it. I hadn't knowed it was _that_ funny. Finally, she was able to catch her breath so she could speak again.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Huck—being good, I mean. I very much hope you don't think you have to do whatever it is people _think_ Huck Finn should do."

Well, she was getting into the hard thoughts now, and I didn't want to go there. Says I, "Just don't tell anyone I was here, and that I brung your purse back to you."

"Then what am I supposed to say? That it dropped out of the sky?"

"Just say you found it in Tom's room, and no other particulars. Tom will guess, but no one else needs to know," I said. I was all in a rush to leave. "Good night, Mary."

"Well...all right," says she. "Good night, Huck." And for a second she looked concerned, and kind of sorrowful—but then the next second it all turned around and bloomed into the prettiest smile you ever did see. A beautiful smile. A soft smile. That smile stuck in my head, along with Muff's smile, and my mother's, and all three of them smiles flew around and struck at my heart and almost set me a-crying. I couldn't look away, but I couldn't say nothing back; that smile just shut me up.

Then Mary reached up to close the window, and I was relieved—but then I thought of something, and I called up to her.

"Mary...it didn't scare you none when pap bullyragged you, did it?"

She stopped, and looked down on me again. The smile come again, a fainter version of it; and this time I could bear it better.

"No; not very much. But thank you for asking. And don't worry yourself over it, Huck...whatever that gentleman does is no fault of yours."

 _That_ was good. I felt a little easier—though I couldn't see pap as a 'gentleman' any more than I could see a mule as a racehorse. Well, then me and her had to give each other our goodbyes all over again, because I'd gone and spoiled the first ones—you know how that is. She reached up again to shut the window, but then she stopped, and pulled something from her purse, and tossed it to me. I catched it before I knowed what it was. "Take care, Huck!" she said, then finally shut the window, and was gone. I just stared at the place where she had been. The candlelight lingered a bit, then dimmed and faded away as she went back downstairs.

I looked down, and turned the thing over in my hands, and saw it was a quarter. Well, she was good; _too_ good. I reckoned I didn't deserve a reward for giving back a thing I'd stole myself. But then, it warn't a reward so much as a gift, and I knowed it—though I reckoned I didn't much deserve any kind of gift, either. She'd always done me considerable kindness, and it was me who owed _her_ , if things was to be fair. I stuffed the quarter in my pocket.

For a while I just set there on that little roof, and gathered my head. I thought about what I'd said to Tom about girls not being worth shucks. Well, it was true for most of them—I reckoned Amy Lawrence warn't worth shucks, because Tom always went for the most useless gals a body ever did see. But Mary was good. She reminded me of mam. I wondered was Mary an angel too.

Then that gave me a thought I hadn't thought before—was all angels women? In all the pictures I ever seen, they wore dresses, so I reckoned they was. But then I remembered that the ol' serpent used to be an angel, and was booted out of heaven, or something like that; and _he_ warn't no woman. That stumped me. I tried to remember _why_ he was booted out, but I couldn't. Maybe he didn't want to wear a dress.

Well, it was enough thinking for one night. I clumb back down to the woodshed, then hopped to the ground. I still didn't have any tobacco, but that could wait until tomorrow; I was all tuckered. I shuffled about, thinking about where I wanted to go, but it soon turned out I didn't have no choice.

Out of nowhere a rough old hand clapped over my mouth, and my arms was pinned to my sides. Then I was drug away to who-knows-where.


	9. The House of Horrors

"Well, _this_ is a fine welcome, I'll say," pap grumbled, a-towering over me. He'd dumped me in the dead end of an alleyway, and he looked so mean and tall that even Goliath would've been scared of him. He most filled the place so that I couldn't squeeze past—not that I'd dare to. Then he knelt down and got close, so close I could smell his breath. It was pretty rank, but no whiskey on it, yet, so I knowed he was bound to be in a frightful mood.

He grabbed at my shirt collar and yanked my face up to his. "Don't you gap at me like that. What, hain't you glad to see your own father?"

I wanted to turn my face away, but I dasn't break his gaze. It was like staring far into a deep cavern, and not knowing where the end of it was. "Yessir," I gasped.

"That's a lie." He tossed me down again, and I stayed that way, too afeard to get up. "If that was so, you wouldn't have took the money that _I_ stole, fair and square. Now gimme that quarter."

"What quarter?" says I, idiotic with fear, because I'd most forgot about it in all this business. Pap he turned on me, and give me a kick—not quite enough to hurt me, exactly, but enough to make me yipe.

"Don't you play ignorunt with me, boy; I seen that quarter when she tossed it to you. Now give it here or I lay I'll make you."

I didn't need him to make me. I dug it out right quick and held it out to him—my hands was all a-shaking. He snatched it up and shoved it in his pocket, and give an awful chuckle, then turned on me again. His face twisted up in the moonlight as he looked me over.

"So—you've got friends, have you?" He give me a shove, and spoke louder. "You've got to thinking you don't need your ol' pap around, have you?"

"No, pap, honest," I said, all choked up. My eyes was popping out of my head like an ol' bullfrog's. "I missed you plenty; honest I did. And I hain't got any friends. Mary she's just nice to me sometimes; you know how ladies is. I missed you lots, pap, truly I did."

"Hmph! Then what business did you have to be filching that money away from me, hey?"

Well I was stuck for an answer, so I didn't say nothing; just breathed fast and hoped I wouldn't cry. The old man abused me for it, and called me some names, and said here's a son who'll take money from his own father, who's only trying to help himself to an income. I let him rail, and let him lick me; the best way was always to let him do as he pleased. It was a funny thing, but once he started thrashing me, I stopped being in such a sweat about it. I was used to being thrashed—it was the waiting that had been the real torture, and once the waiting was done, all that was left for me was to take my whipping and pull through.

Finally he comes to a stop, and draws back a little, and tells me to empty out my pockets, so I does. There was the apple stem, and the feather, and my pipe, and the thimble, and some other little treasures of mine; but the thimble was the only one he was interested in, as it was the only thing that looked like it could fetch him some money. He took it, and pocketed it. I was sorry to see such a thimble go, but then I was relieved that pap had something to take; it would cheer him some. I was glad I'd used the other quarter already, the one I'd used to buy corn-pone for me and Muff—otherwise pap would have took it, and then it wouldn't have been no use to me.

I was right. It cheered pap to know that he'd cleaned me out and took from me anything that had any value, though he didn't know that the little white feather was worth more to me than a thousand thimbles. "I'm going to get powerful drunk tonight," he said, smiling an awful sort of smile, and his teeth poked through his lips like a gator's. "Three months locked up in jail has left me mighty dry."

"What did you get throwed in jail for?" I asked, because I wanted to know.

"Oh, nothing much, only I busted a man up when he told me to get out of his 'stablishment."

My blood run cold. "Killed him?"

"Ha! I wisht I had! Derned fool, thought he had a right to tell _me_ what to do. Told me I was causing a ruckus! Well, I showed him a ruckus, all right. Yessir, I showed him one. I could have raised such a ruckus as to knock his brains out, if the sheriff hadn't catched me; but then it took two or three men just to hold me down, and I give them a mighty rough time, I did." Pap he laughed at the memory of it, but I stayed silent; I didn't want to think about it. He just kept on laughing and laughing and saying it over again till I felt sick, so I cut in and asked how much money he'd got today. Well, I soon realize it was a sore subject, and I shouldn't have asked.

"Less than I could've got, no thanks to your meddling," he growled, and told me to stick to my own business next time, and to think about my actions when I was hungry and didn't have nothing to eat. Well I didn't need pap to feed me; I was better off taking care of myself. He'd been right about me the first time—I _didn't_ need him around. But I warn't about to let him know that. He'd say I'd got to be too big for my britches, and then he'd think it was his job to shrink me down some.

"But never mind, though—this money's enough for tonight." He chuckled and patted his trousers pocket, and it jingled so that I felt even sicker. I knowed that the jinglier his pocket was, the drunker he'd be; and by the sound of things he'd have enough whiskey for "two drunks and one delirium tremens," to use his favorite words.

I thought that pap was going to leave me alone, now. He'd already had his fill of licking me, and now he wanted a drink, so what use did he have for _me_ to hang around? Says I:

"Are you heading off to the tavern now?"

Says he:

"Yes, and you're a-coming with me. Someone's got to keep you out of trouble, and I allow I'm the only one who can."

So he warn't done with me yet. My stomach turned all over itself, and my head swum. I never _could_ pray, but I did what I could—which is to say, I hoped. It warn't going to be too easy for me or pap, if he hadn't had a good drink in three months. Three months just drained all the liquor out of a man. And then, for him to all of a sudden go and liquor himself up again, after all that time being sober...it warn't good judgment, in my opinion.

He set off for the tavern, but he didn't need to drag me after him like he done sometimes. I knowed better than to fight. As I followed, I begged and begged him not to drink so much—I seen him overdo it before, and I feared the worst of it. But of course he didn't listen, only told me I was meddling again, and said that if I meddled some more he would show me what was what. So I clammed up, and didn't speak no more, but _lord_ I felt so scared and useless that it was all I could do to keep the tears from coming.

The tavern owner, Mr. Shirley, knowed me when we went in, even though I ducked my head low and tried not to let myself know where I was. It was loud in there and all full of men's laughter, and I would have give anything just to be somewhere safe and quiet. I felt just like a poor little animal—all spooked by the noise and the general hubbub of the place, but then pap had a grip on the back of my shirt so I couldn't get away. He slammed his dishonest money down on the counter and told Mr. Shirley what he wanted.

Of course a boy of my age warn't allowed in the tavern. But Mr. Shirley just pretended not to notice me. I warn't Huckleberry, then, you see; but just Ol' Finn's boy, and there's a difference.

We left the tavern two jugs of whiskey richer, and I felt sicker than ever. He made me carry one of them, on account of he still kept a hand around my wrist like an iron shackle. He said that if I dropped the jug he'd take the price of the whiskey out of _me,_ so of course then I had an interest in keeping it safe. Well, first thing pap does is he downs a quarter of the first jug, straight off, and _that_ sure heartened him up. He let out a mighty whoop, which made my heart forget to beat and half shocked me to death. It made me change my mind about going with him—I had to get away, or bust. All right, says I, his grip on me is bound to loosen up after a few more swigs, and then I'll drop the whiskey and run away. Then pap says:

"It's good to be free again—yessir, good to be free!" He was waving the whiskey jug about. Twice he come pretty darn near to clipping me in the head with it, which was remarkable seeing as I was on t'other side of him. He went on:

"Yes...good to be free, when it's so dern hard to be in this godforsaken nation! Some country this is—calls itself free, but then locks up its citizens so they _ain't._ Why, I had half a mind to break out of jail myself, and for two cents I _would've,_ if'n I'd only had a gun. Free! Mighty hard for a man to be free, and lay claim to his proper rights, when he's held down all the time by the rich folks and the folks with power. Why, you'd most think we was in _England,_ and had an aristockercy!"

Pap he could rip and tear something wonderful, and I reckon you could say it was a gift of his. Once he begun, there was never any stopping him, and the whiskey always helped, too. Presently he continues:

"I _should_ have broke out of jail. That would've shown them! A man don't have to wait for the govment to give him his freedom—he's got his freedom no matter what! All that the govment does, and all that the law does, is take folks' freedoms away when they've already got 'em. Blasted country! Calls itself free! A man ain't any free-er here than an animal in a pen, and the govment's just the blasted farmer, fatting him up to slaughter him and put him on the table!"

And he went on like that, cussing and shouting and getting all warmed up. I didn't take much stock in what he was saying, because pap hated all the other countries too; England and Mexico and New Jersey and such—though he'd never even been to any of them. Whenever he went for any of _those_ countries, he would always talk America up and say it was the grandest, free-est place a body ever saw. But whenever he _warn't_ going for one of those countries, America was a regular hellhole for him. There ain't no sense in people like that.

Once he really started laying into it, to the point where he was shouting fit to wake the dead, I said all right then, now's the time, and tried to give him the slip. But he catched me before I could, and twisted my arm back, and I crumpled down like a bird that'd been shot. It hurt like anything, and I didn't try no more afterward.

After I got over the pain enough so I could speak, I cut into his rip and asked where he was taking us, to which he said the tanyard. I might have guessed, as it was his usual spot. He said we'd settle there, and then he'd finish off the rest of his whiskey—and if I ever tried to run, he'd make sure that both my legs was broke. A body don't need much more encouragement than that. I looked at him all spooked, and he laughed at me, and it brightened him so much he was inspired to start up again.

"Another thing!" he roared. He kept on draining out the whiskey jug from time to time, and I allowed that the way he was going, he wouldn't have any more to finish off by the time we got to the tanyard. "Rich folks is always acting like they owns the poor ones! I don't work no more for rich folks—the varmints!—but when I _did_ —I tell you what!—they'd work a man to the bone, and hardly pay what he could buy a drink with, and there warn't no other way of it! Why, I'll swear on it; one day all the men below is going to rise up and fight down all the men above, and take ahold of their proper rights, and their freedoms, which the govment and the law and the rich folks won't let 'em have—"

Then he stopped, because then we come across an old handbill tacked up on a post, with a picture of a slave on it. I'd seen that handbill before. A few months ago, they'd been tacked all over town so that a body couldn't walk ten feet without seeing a minimum of thirty-seven. And I knowed the slave, too—leastways, I reckonized him. Old Jameson's slave, he was; or _had_ been, till he'd disappeared last January. It had caused _such_ a fuss, and tons of men had gone out and searched for him, but the slave had never been found. Pap was just disgusted by it. He took two extra swallows from his bottle just to show how hot it made him.

"That devil ought to be strung up and _hanged,"_ he growled, spit and whiskey flying from his mouth. "Imagine! Slaves thinking they owns themselves, and thinking they hain't got to answer to no one, and thinking they deserve a better lot! They ought to be grateful to their owners, for giving 'em something to employ themselves with—best thing that could be done for them, the filthy creturs!"

He went on railing, but I quit listening. I'd heard it before, and it was all the same. It _was_ a tolerable long rip. He paused in the middle of it, to drink off the last of the first jug, and then he took the second one from me and drunk some of that too. Then he continued ripping and tearing with more life in him than ever before. The more he went on, the harder it became to understand him; he was so drunk. Finally he finished, a good while later, and wrapped the thing up with the prettiest string of cusses a body ever heard.

I was expecting him to start on something else, then, because he had a full jug of whiskey in him now, and a little more besides. But the old man just fell silent after that. It frightened me. I kept on waiting and waiting to hear something more, but nothing ever came. His steps got unsteadier and unsteadier. He seemed to become like a dead man, only he breathed, and he walked—or tried to, as best he could.

Well, by and by, we pass the tanyard, and pap never even stops once. I watched it go right by us, all surprised.

"Hain't we a-going over there?" I says, but pap he just grunted and jerked me a bit, and muttered something about how I had mush for brains. I figured it would be best to let him be, but I begun to get scared. We was getting farther and farther away from town. He wouldn't say nothing, but he held onto me harder than ever. All sorts of creepy tales starting popping into my head, some from the papers and some from Tom's stories, where men went and slaughtered boys in the dead of night. It made me dream up the most frightful imaginings. Thinks I, s'pose pap takes me into the forest and ties me up and hacks me all to pieces? It made me shiver right down to my bones, I tell you, and I wished I'd never thought it.

Pap would stumble now and then as he drug me along. He was _terrible_ drunk. I didn't reckon the whiskey was being so friendly to him, after he'd gone so long without it. You see, good friends is always glad to see one another when they ain't seen each other for a while, but whiskey is never like that. It'll most knock the tar out of a body.

"Where are we going?" I asked, in the smallest voice I could manage. An owl was who-whooing way off in the distance. _That_ was never a good sign. To me, it sounded just like he was saying 'turn back, turn back.'

"Where do you think we're a-going?" pap snarled back, his talk all slow and sloppy; and then he called me some several names, none of them very nice. "We're going home. Natural born fool, if ever I see one..."

Well, I couldn't think what he meant by 'home;' we didn't have one. A mean old cloud passed over the moon and cast a shadow on everything. Then I knowed—or thought I did, anyways—and I started to sweat and shake like nothing else. Oh, lordy, lordy, thinks I; he means to send me _home—_ home to the angels, or to the demons, more likely—where I'll stay forever and ever till all the world dies out. I begun to look over him fearful, to see if he had a knife or some other thing in his pockets, but it was too dark, and I couldn't make sure of nothing.

But by and by I start to pay less attention to pap, and more attention to the road we're on, and then I got to feeling rather peculiar. There was something almost familiar about the way we was going, like I had been there in a dream. The trees seemed to know me, and so did the dirt, and it got so that I could almost guess where and when we was going to make a turn. It was like walking through a fog, only the fog was all in my head—but the farther we tramped, the clearer things seemed to get.

Then all of a sudden, it come to me, and I knowed where we was headed. It had been an awful long time since I'd gone this way. Still, I remembered. My breath catched a little in my chest, and it seemed to me I was growing smaller and smaller till I was the boy I'd been six years ago.

He was taking me to our old house—the one that we had lived in with mam. Not that the house had ever really been ourn. And not that it had ever really been a _house,_ either. But it had had four walls, and we had lived there for a good long while, so it was just as well. I hadn't seen the place since mam had died and me and pap had left—pap had always figured it was cursed, or haunted, or both; and I had always thought the same. What could he possibly want here _now?_ I knowed better than to ask, but I tell you, my guts were just twisting up all over themselves.

When we finally come to it, the poor thing looked just about as miserable as a house could look. It was an old, sorry-looking shanty, all rotted and fallen apart in most places. It hadn't been fit to live in before, but now it warn't fit to die in. The roof had caved, and you could see that all the rain and snow had just et the wretched boards up. Why, there warn't even a door anymore. It had rotted through and crumbled into the mud, and now the remains of it was all damp and mushy like a drownded corpse. The silence of it all made everything a thousand times scarier and more uncomfortable, and I sure wished pap would say something. But when he _did,_ I turned right back around and wished he hadn't.

"Susanna?" pap calls all of a sudden, his voice all thick and raspy, and my poor heart just goes faint. Susanna—that had been the name of my mother. He's trying to summon mam's ghost, says I, and now the two of us are doomed, sure! I thought I might die for terror. I grabbed at pap's shirt sleeve and clung to him.

"Oh, don't call her so, pap; I can't bear it," I says, the tears starting to come. My voice was barely more than a whisper—that was about as much as I could manage. "I won't do nothing against you ever again, as long as I live! Please, don't make her come—just let the poor ghost alone!"

I didn't know what rules dead people had to follow. Thinking about it now, I reckon that a body couldn't be both an angel _and_ a ghost, since angels can go up to heaven when they want to and ghosts are only stuck down here with us. But I warn't about to take no chances. I didn't want to see no angels _nor_ no ghosts, because either way, mam was dead. And like I said before, I hain't never been jumping out of my seat to meet no dead people. Whether they had wings, or didn't have 'em, made no difference to me.

Pap he never listened, but just walked straight into that old busted shack, and kept on calling for my mother. He let go of me, then, when he walked in, but it warn't no relief to me—I was froze with fear. He called a third time, then tripped over a felled beam, and lay there and moaned. It was a rough time trying to cipher those sounds into words, but I done it. "Where is that dad-blamed woman?" he was asking, all sour. Then he said the same thing again, and added, "She's run off, no doubt… I 'llow I'll make it warm for _her_ when she comes back."

"Pap…" I creeped closer, because he was the only thing around that was alive, and it give me just a bit of comfort. I crouched down next to him. He was still a-moaning and a-groaning.

"Run off from _me,_ will she? _I'll_ show her...by jings, I will. I'll show her till her bones is sore!" And he went on a-muttering and a-mumbling, and then I happened to realize that ghosts don't have no bones, and so it warn't ghosts he was looking for. I looked at the jug of whiskey he still had in his hands.

"Pap, mam is dead," I told him, all quiet and careful and scared. "Long dead. Six years dead. You won't find her round here no more—leastways, not with any flesh on her, nor bones, neither."

But it was like he never heard me. He stumbled up, and fell back down, and begun to crawl over to the wall—the one that split the bedroom from the rest of the house. He tried to lean against it to help him stand, but it warn't no use—the wood give in with a horrible groan, and down he tumbled again. There was an awful bunch of snaps and creaks as the boards all went in on themselves and the roof slipped even closer to the ground, spilling dust and rot everywhere.

"Pap, it ain't safe here," I said, watching that roof with my eyes big as tin plates. "We'll be squashed flat if we stay!"

I might as well have sung a few verses of Yankee Doodle, for all he heard me. He crawled under all the smashed boards and into t'other room. I didn't follow, but I looked in at the hole, and peeked.

First thing I saw, I felt a sick kind of punch in my gut. The remains of an old straw tick was there in the corner. I knowed that tick well. It looked like it had been stomped flat, and there was holes all in the casing, and the straw just spilling through. The rain had gone and soaked every inch, so that the mold had gotten to it. I don't reckon even a hog would have wanted to sleep there, now. It was the bed that mam had died in, and it had been all full of sickness and hard memories when me and pap left, so we'd left it there to rot. It looked like it had done a pretty good job of it.

Pap he creeped over to it, and I almost thought he was going to lay in it, but he didn't. Instead he kneeled over it and looked down, almost as if he saw something there—or some _one._ It just made all of my hairs prickle. His back was to me, and I couldn't see his face. Says he, all low and quiet:

"Death has come a-knocking. Poor girl—lived her life through. Never could do a derned thing right, in all her days…" He was quiet for a moment. A minute passed.

Then he begun to shake and shiver all over. He let out a yell that stole the air out of my lungs and the next five beats out of my heart. I fell back and couldn't get myself up. "Where is she?" I heard him shout. "Thinks she can get away from me... I'll find her—I'll find her!"

He went on like that, just saying he'd find her over and over, and ripping up what was left of the tick—that was what it sounded like. When I pulled myself up, I saw that I was right, and moldy straw and sackcloth just littered the place. I never feel so sick in all my life; it was like being in a nightmare, only I couldn't wake up. Then pap stops, stock-still, and slowly turns around. His black cavern-eyes shone through his long hair and found me.

" _There_ you are!" he hissed, and begun to crawl towards me.

Well, I didn't waste even a second. I scrambled up and lit out of there as fast as I could. I made up my mind to never come back to that awful place—it was haunted, certain; and if not with ghosts, then with horrors and miseries. The whole time I was running I felt like there was things chasing behind, spirits and demons and the like; and it just lit a fire under my heels.

I didn't stop till I'd ducked into an alley and come to my favorite hogshead. I'd left a blanket there earlier, made of burlap, and now I just cocooned myself up in it and hoped I'd fall asleep.

But the sleep never come. My head was full of terrors, and my eyes was wide open. I sat there till the sun woke up.


End file.
